153 Pa. 271 | Pa. | 1893
Opinion by
The plaintiff was one of a party of excursionists who were riding upon the defendant’s steamboat between points on the Delaware river on a moonlight evening in the month of August, 1890. There were about two hundred persous on board the boat. When the vessel touched at a place called Billings-port the excursionists left the boat and walked to Lincoln Park,
The mate, Charles Huron, testified that he had the plank drawn in. He was asked: “ Q. Is that the usual and ordinary place to carry a gang plank ? A. Yes, sir. The usual place is to drag it right in — right across the deck and leave it lie. Q. In what part of the boat? A. In the forward part of the boat. Q. Was this placed in its ordinary place. A. It was. Q. And where you usually carried it? A. Yes, sir. It was never anywhere else; only sometimes when by request they were moved in order that they could dance there. Q. But there was no dancing on the boat that evening ? A. No, sir.’1 Captain Kelly said it was in its usual place.
William P. Somers, a master of steamboats for thirty year-
It is true that the plaintiff’s husband testified that the gang plank lay right across the path to the staircase. All the other witnesses examined on that subject, four of them, testified that it did not lie in that position but outside that pathway, but we do not attach any essential consequence to the particular location of the plank. If it was in the position testified to by the plaintiff’s husband, only two feet in front of the end of the other gang plank leading from the wharf to the boat, all the passengers who got off the boat and returned must necessarily have passed over it. Yet none of them stumbled or fell over it so far as the proof goes, and its location cannot be regarded as either necessarily or probably the occasion of persons stumbling over it. But a gang plank is a highly necessary, and, indeed, indispensable appliance of a steamboat engaged in the transportation of passengers and freight. There is no other place for it to lie, when not in use, except the deck of the boat, and passengers must be assumed to know the fact that such planks are in use and are present on the deck in the near vicinity of those portions of the vessel from which landings are made. There are many other appliances on the deck of a vessel which project above the surface, such as coils of rope or chain, snubbing blocks, capstans, hatchways, etc., and passengers are bound to take notice of them and to avoid stumbling over them. We cannot consider that the mere presence of any of these necessary and usual appliances upon the deck of a vessel, if in ordinary and usual condition, confers any right of action upon a passenger who trips or stumbles over them. It cannot be said that it was too dark to see this plank, because the plaintiff’s husband says that he saw it immediately after the accident when he came back to see what caused it. He described minutely the position of the plank about two feet in advance of the other plank, lying across the path of the stairway, and the height of the plank. If he could see all these particulars, he could see the plank. He said there were no
Judgment reversed.