The plaintiff, while passing from the train, on which she was a passenger on the defendant’s railroad, to the highway, over the platform and station grounds, stepped upon some loose shingles which had been left on the ground by the defendant while shingling its station-house, and fell and was hurt. The plaintiff contended, and the defendant denied, that the defendant was negligent in permitting the shingles to remain there; and both parties asked instructions as to the degree of care which the defendant was bound to exercise in the matter. The plaintiff asked instructions to the effect that the defendant was bound, as a common carrier of passengers, to exercise the utmost care and diligence in providing egress from its premises; that it was liable if the plaintiff was injured through the existence of air obstruction on the premises, which might have been guarded against by the utmost care and foresight on the part of the defendant ; and that it was the duty of the defendant to provide for its passengers a reasonable and safe opportunity to pass from its premises, and to take means to prevent any injury to them while so passing which human care and foresight could guard against.
The presiding justice read these requests to the jury, and, in answer to them, gave the instruction that, in case the plaintiff has the rights of a passenger, “ she is entitled to all the care which human foresight can furnish her; ” and, at the close of his charge, as a summary and repetition of the law and instructions upon the matters of the prayers, told the jury that, if the plaintiff had been a passenger on the defendant’s railroad, and was passing from the train to the highway over the platform and grounds, “ the defendant was bound to be in the exercise towards her of such care and diligence as could reasonably be exercised to protect her from such injuries as human foresight could anticipate and prevent.”
Taking the instructions given, in connection with the requests for instructions by the parties, the jury may well have understood that the defendant was bound to take every possible precaution against the plaintiff’s injury, and was liable if human foresight could have anticipated and prevented it. The former instruction expressly referred to the degree of care ; the latter, taken by itself, would refer to the object rather than the degree of care, as does so much of it as is taken from Ingalls v. Bills,
The former instruction is clearly erroneous. The latter, if its meaning is that the defendant was bound to use reasonable care to prevent injuries that could be prevented, was immaterial, as it gave no rule of reasonable care; if its meaning is that the defendant was bound to use such care as would prevent injuries which could be prevented, it was, in substance, the same as the other, and equally erroneous. If the language could be construed to intend only the rule of care required of passenger carriers in
Fxceptions sustained.