10 N.Y. 108 | NY | 1873
The questions presented upon this appeal are founded upon exceptions to the refusal to nonsuit the plaintiff at the close of the trial. If the evidence upon any view that can be' taken of it entitled the plaintiff to a verdict, the judgment must be affirmed. The case was submitted to the jury with great fairness, and with accurate instructions as to the law, if there was in truth any evidence of a neglect of duty, or want of care on the part of the servants and agents of the defendant to which the injury to and death of the plaintiff’s intestate could legally be attributed,
' The cases bearing upon the liability of railway companies, and other carriers of human beings as passengers for hire, for any defect in their roadways, carriages and other vehicles of transportation, any neglect or want of care by themselves, their agents or servants in the performance of the service undertaken, and for injuries caused by or resulting' directly from the acts of the carrier or his servants, either to the passenger or third persons, may be laid out of view, except as they serve to indicate the stringency and extent of the liability imposed by law upon carriers, and the extreme care and diligence required of them, in all that concerns their own acts and the agencies and means employed by them. The acts, neglects and omissions complained of here, upon which the action is based, do not come within either class of cases referred to. The passenger was carried in a safe and proper manner, and there is no complaint of injury from any defect in the means of conveyance, or any act or omission of duty on the part of the servants of the company in respect to the plaintiff’s intestate personally. The wrong and injury complained of is the wanton and unprovoked
There is no such privity between a railway company and a passenger as to make it liable for the wrongful acts of the passenger upon any principle. (Pittsburgh, F. W. & C. R. Co. v. Hinds, 53 Penn. St. R., 512.) But a railroad company has the power of refusing to receive as a passenger, or to expel any one who is drunk, - disorderly or riotous, or who so demeans himself as to endanger the safety or interfere with the reasonable comfort and convenience of the other passengers, and may exert all necessary power and means to eject from the cars any one so imperiling the safety, or annoying others; and this police power the conductor, or other servant of the company in charge of the car or train, is bound to exercise with all the means he can command whenever occasion requires. If this duty is neglected without good cause, and a passenger receives injury, which might have been reasonably anticipated or naturally expected, from one who is improperly received, or permitted to continue as a passenger, the carrier is responsible. (Pittsburgh, F. W. & C. R. Co. v. Hinds [supra]; Flint v. Norwich and N. Y. Transportation Co., 34 Conn., 554; 6 Blatch. C. C. R., 158.) In the case first cited, a passenger was seriously injured by a large body of drunken and riotous persons, who came upon the train in defiance of the conductor in charge; and the court in banc held that, upon the evidence in that case, the only question which should have been submitted to the jury was whether the conductor did all he could to quell the riot and eject the rioters, and that if he did not the company was liable. The judge at nisi prims having submitted other questions, to wit, whether the conductor allowed improper persons on the train, and whether he allowed more persons on
The conductor was only called upon to act upon improprieties or offences witnessed by him, or made known to him in some other way, and the defendants can only be charged for neglect of some duty arising from circumstances of which the conductor was cognizant, or of which he ought, in the discharge of his duties as conductor, to have been cognizant.
There was no evidence tending to show that the conductor
If there was anything in the condition, conduct, appearance or manner of Foster from which the jury could reasonably infer that there, was reason to expect or anticipate an attack upon the deceased, or any other passenger, either while upon the car, or in "the act of leaving, the facts authorizing such inference should have been proved, and knowledge of them brought home to the conductor. The injury to and death of Ur. .Putnam was immediately and directly caused- by the murderous, attack of Foster, and the carriage of the murderer by the defendant had no connection with and did not 'cause the act or directly contribute to it.
It is said in McGrew v. Stone (53 Penn. St. R., 436) that the general rule is that a man is answerable for the consequences of a fault, which are natural and probable; but if "his fault happen to concur with something extraordinary and not likely to be forseen, he will not be answerable.
The assault by Foster upon the deceased could not have been foreseen, and it was not the reasonable or probable consequence of the omission of the conductor to eject him from the car, and upon principle as well as upon authority the injury was too remote to charge the defendant for the damages. In Scott v Shepherd (2 W. Bl., 892), Guille v. Swan (19 J. R., 381) and Vandenburgh v. Truax (4 Den., 464), the injuries were held to be the natural and direct result of the conduct of the party charged, although he did not intend the particular injury which followed.
There was no evidence to carry the case to the jury, and the motion for a nonsuit should have been granted.
The judgment must be reversed, and a new trial granted.
All concur.
Judgment reversed.