74 N.J.L. 237 | N.J. | 1907
The opinion of the court was delivered by
The plaintiff in this case, a girl seventeen years of age, was a passenger upon one of the summer cars of the defendant company on the night of September 9th, 1905. At a place called Grantwood the Port Lee branch of the defendant company’s railway leaves the main line. When the car upon which the plaintiff was riding reached that point, it turned off from the main track and entered ujion the branch line. After having passed a very short distance beyond the junction point it was brought to a stop, and while remaining at a standstill it was run into by another car which was following it. The latter car should have continued upon the main line past the point where the Port Lee branch diverged, but failed to do so owing to the fact that the switch had not been replaced in its normal position after the car upon which the plaintiff was riding had passed over it. The collision was forcible enough to throw the plaintiff forward and bring her head in contact with the back of the seat in front of her. Although she did not show anjr immediate signs of serious injury, a day or two afterward symptoms of hysteria appeared, and gradually hysterical or psychical paralysis developed, destroying the use of her right arm and leg. She seeks by this action to recover from the defendant company compensation for the injury received by her, upon the ground that the accident was due to the negligence of the motorman who operated the car, which collided with that upon which she was riding, in running at an excessive rate of speed as it approached the switch. The jury so found and awarded her as compensation the sum of $15,000.
Two reasons are assigned for setting aside the verdict and
So far as the proofs in the present case disclose, the motorman on the second car had no reason to expect to find that the .switch at Grantwood had been closed after the passage over it of the car which had just entered upon the Fort Lee branch. For anything that appears to tlie contrary, the duty of turning the switch back may have been one which rested upon him. It is, perhaps, not going too far to say that this is the natural presumption, for it is a matter of common knowledge that it is the ordinary practice in the operation of trolley roads for each motorman who approaches' a switch with his cat and who finds it closed against him, to open it for the passage of his own car and leave it to those who follow him to close it when it becomes necessary to do so. Under the circumstances of •this ease we consider that the jury was entirely justified in finding that the motorman in charge of the second car, in running it as he approached this switch at such a rate of speed as to make it impossible for him to bring it to a stop after he took the switch until it had collided with the car in which the plaintiff was a passenger, was guilty of operating it in a negligent manner, and that this negligence was a proximate cause of the plaintiffs injuries.
The rule to show cause will be made absolute.