Stupka, Appellant, v. Peoples Cab Company.
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
May 22, 1970
437 Pa. 509
To similar effect is Frontier Motors v. Chick Norton Buick Company, 78 Ariz. 341, 279 P. 2d 1032, 1035 (1955), a case in which the conditional vendor contended that it was entitled to either possession of the car being replevied, or its full value. The con- ditional vendee responded that the vendor was entitled only to the value of the car minus the payments made by the vendee. The court quite properly held that “in a replevin action a plaintiff having only a special inter- est in the goods in controversy cannot recover more than the amount of his special interest. In other words, the plaintiff is only entitled to be made whole.” Cf. Tillis v. Calvine Cotton Mills, Inc., 251 N.C. 359, 111 S.E. 2d 606 (1959); State v. Justice, 109 So. 2d 761 (Fla. 1959).
Brandywine is entitled to possession of the alleys. However, to affirm a judgment for the full value of the goods would be to give Brandywine a windfall.
Mr. Justice EAGEN and Mr. Justice ROBERTS join in this opinion.
Stupka, Appellant, v. Peoples Cab Company.
Gerald N. Ziskind, for appellant.
Robert A. Cohen, for appellee.
It is clear that plaintiff, appellant, is not asserting that appellee caused her physical injuries but rather that appellee caused her financial harm by not obtain- ing the name or license number of the driver whose car struck the cab from the rear. As there are no prior cases on this particular subject, appellant would have this Court create and impose on cab companies the duty to obtain sufficient information about individuals in- volved in traffic accidents with cabs to enable cab pas- sengers at least to know against whom to bring suit.
Common law courts have been reluctant to impose affirmative duties on individuals even in situations in which most people would feel under a moral obligation to act. The Restatement (Second), Torts, §314 (1965) states that as long as the actor‘s conduct has not placed another in peril “[t]he fact that the actor realizes or should realize that action on his part is necessary for another‘s aid or protection does not of itself impose upon him a duty to take such action.” This Court, in Yania v. Bigan, 397 Pa. 316, 321-2, 155 A. 2d 343, 346 (1959), stated: “Lastly, it is urged that Bigan failed to take the necessary steps to rescue Yania from the water. The mere fact that Bigan saw Yania in a position of peril in the water imposed upon him no legal, although a moral, obligation or duty to go to his rescue unless Bigan was legally responsible, in whole or in part, for placing Yania in the perilous position.” Behind this is the “rugged individualism” approach of the common law and “the feeling that it is a more serious restraint on personal freedom to require a person to act than it is to place limits on his liberty to act.” McNiece and Thornton, Affirmative Duties in Tort. 58 Yale L. J. 1272, 1288 (1949).
In recent years, however, there have been attempts
to mitigate the harshness of this rule. Usually the
It must be noted, however, that this imposition of
legal duty only applies to the physical well-being of the
passenger. Appellant does not contend that appellee
refused to offer assistance after she suffered her in-
juries. Rather, she states that appellee did not act to
protect her financial interests. This is a step towards
making a common carrier the guardian of all its pas-
sengers’ interests that no court has yet taken. “The
courts seem to have been somewhat more willing to im-
pose liability on this basis when there has been physical
injury to persons or property than where the injury is
to the interest in financial advantage.” 2 Harper and
James, supra, §18.6, n. 7 at 1046.1 The interest in the
passenger‘s physical well-being is sufficiently import-
Order affirmed.
Mr. Chief Justice BELL, Mr. Justice EAGEN, and Mr. Justice POMEROY join in this opinion.
CONCURRING OPINION BY MR. JUSTICE JONES:
On March 21, 1967, the plaintiff, Myrtle J. Stupka,
was a passenger in a taxicab operated by Peoples Cab
Company [Peoples] when it was struck in the rear by
another vehicle. The taxicab was stopped at the time
of the accident and there is no claim that the accident
was in any way caused by the actions of the cab driver.
The Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, in passing upon People‘s preliminary objections to the complaint of plaintiff, held that the carrier owed no duty to the passenger to investigate the facts of the accident so as to aid the passenger in possible future litigation and, therefore, sustained People‘s preliminary objections. Plaintiff then appealed to this Court.
Initially, it should be mentioned that this appears to be a totally unique claim by the plaintiff. Our re- search fails to locate any case in any jurisdiction even vaguely apposite to the case at bar. However, whether this taxicab driver‘s failure to question the operator of the other vehicle constituted negligence need not be decided.
The plaintiff‘s recovery is barred unless she can es-
tablish that this failure somehow caused her injuries.
Cuthbert v. Philadelphia, 417 Pa. 610, 209 A. 2d 261 (1965). The facts pleaded by the plaintiff clearly es-
tablish that her injuries were caused by the apparently
negligent driving of an unknown third party. Even if
this were to create a duty on the part of the taxicab
driver to secure the other driver‘s name and license
number, the breach of that duty in the case at bar was
still not the proximate cause of the appellant‘s in-
juries. Such a breach, at most, prevented plaintiff
from suing the unknown driver. However, we have no
The reason for such an unsatisfactory dilemma is that there is no causal relationship between the appel- lee‘s failure to act and the plaintiff‘s injuries. Even in jurisdictions which permit recovery where a carrier has failed to assist a passenger who has been injured en route, any recovery is limited to the aggravation of injury which is directly attributable to the carrier‘s delay or failure to render assistance. Annot., 92 A.L.R. 2d 656, 658 (1963). Recovery must be limited to com- pensation for the physical injuries directly caused by the carrier‘s action or inaction. In the case at bar, plaintiff‘s injuries were not caused by any act or omis- sion to act on the part of the appellee and consequently, plaintiff has not pleaded sufficient grounds upon which to base a cause of action against the appellee.
The court below properly sustained the People‘s preliminary objections.
DISSENTING OPINION BY MR. JUSTICE O‘BRIEN:
I do not agree with the conclusion reached by the
majority. I believe that Peoples is liable to the plain-
tiff and that the task of determining the amount of
such liability is readily soluble.
I do not contend that Peoples had a duty “to in- vestigate the facts of the accident so as to aid the passenger in possible future litigation“, but I do be- lieve that Peoples had a simple duty to ascertain the identity of the other driver when he was readily avail- able and did, in fact, converse with Peoples’ driver sub- sequent to the accident. Such a duty on behalf of its passenger is surely not too much to impose upon a common carrier. When Peoples failed to perform this simple duty, it rendered impossible a recovery by the plaintiff against the unknown driver. It is for this reason that I believe Peoples is liable and not because there is a causal connection between Peoples’ negli- gence and the plaintiff‘s physical injuries.
The majority opinion refuses to recognize this duty, labelling it a “moral” duty as opposed to a legal one. It reasons that, despite the trend in the law to- wards the conversion of moral duties into legal ones where a special relationship, such as common carrier and passenger, exists between the parties, such a trend should only be followed where the interest being pro- tected is the passenger‘s physical well-being as opposed to his financial well-being. It argues that the interest in a passenger‘s financial well-being is outweighed by an interest in not imposing an affirmative duty to act on the carrier where it was not responsible for placing the passenger in the original position of peril.
Even if I could accept the general thesis that a dis-
tinction should be drawn between physical and finan-
The concurring opinion concludes that it would, in
any event, be impossible to determine damages. It
opines that we would have no way of determining
whether plaintiff would, in any event, have been suc-
cessful in an action against the unknown driver. It
seems to me that that question should not deprive the
plaintiff of a cause of action. I see no reason why, in
a suit against Peoples, all of the evidence which might
have been presented against the unknown driver could
not be presented, and why a jury could not determine
the liability of the unknown driver and the amount of
plaintiff‘s damages. The only difference would be that
Peoples would be required to pay these damages not
because, I repeat, Peoples’ negligence caused the physi-
cal injuries, but rather because Peoples’ negligence pre-
Richette v. Pennsylvania R.R., 410 Pa. 6, 187 A. 2d 910 (1963), offers some help. In that case, Attorney Richette had entered into a one-third contingent fee contract with a client who had a cause of action against the railroad. Subsequently, the railroad interfered with Richette‘s contractual relationship with his client, induced the client to discharge Richette and entered into a direct settlement with the client. Richette sued the railroad and recovered $10,000.00 in compensatory damages, even though the amount of the settlement was only $8,500.00. Richette had testified in his suit against the railroad that he expected a verdict of $30,000.00 had his client‘s case against the railroad come to trial. The jury apparently accepted that $30,000.00 evalua- tion and awarded Richette $10,000.00 as compensatory damages.
In that case, we had no problem with determining whether the plaintiff, Richette‘s client, would have won his action against the railroad. Nor can we say that the problem was eliminated by reason of the settlement, a settlement never being an admission of liability. Nor did we have any difficulty in allowing a recovery based upon the amount which Richette‘s client might have recovered in a suit against the rail- road.
I see no greater problem in the instant case than in Richette. I would reverse the order of the court below and allow the action to proceed to trial.
Mr. Justice ROBERTS joins in this dissent.