| Mass. | May 20, 1914
The female plaintiff (hereafter referred to as the plaintiff) was a passenger upon a car of the defendant on Huntington Avenue, going toward Brookline, after dark on an April evening. She was not familiar with the neighborhood. She told the conductor that she desired to go to Oak Square. He replied that she must change at Brookline Village. Shortly after, when the car had stopped two and a half car lengths from a white pole indicating a regular stopping place, the conductor told her
Plainly the plaintiff might have been found to have been in the exercise of due care. Keith v. Worcester & Blackstone Valley Street Railway, 196 Mass. 478" court="Mass." date_filed="1907-11-26" href="https://app.midpage.ai/document/keith-v-worcester--blackstone-valley-street-railway-co-6430017?utm_source=webapp" opinion_id="6430017">196 Mass. 478.
There was also evidence from which the jury might have found that the defendant was negligent. Its duty was to exercise the highest degree of care consistent with the conduct of its business, not only in transporting its passengers but in enabling them safely to alight at the end of the journey. The plaintiff’s contract of carriage had not ended. She was transferring at the invitation of the representative of the defendant from one of its cars to another immediately following upon the same track. The relation of passenger and carrier probably was not ended under these circumstances. Tompkins v. Boston Elevated Railway, 201 Mass. 114" court="Mass." date_filed="1909-02-25" href="https://app.midpage.ai/document/tompkins-v-boston-elevated-railway-co-6430540?utm_source=webapp" opinion_id="6430540">201 Mass. 114. See Powers v. Old Colony Street Railway, 201 Mass. 66" court="Mass." date_filed="1909-02-24" href="https://app.midpage.ai/document/powers-v-old-colony-street-railway-co-6430529?utm_source=webapp" opinion_id="6430529">201 Mass. 66. But however that may be, the defendant owed at least as high a degree of duty to the plaintiff thus alighting as it would have owed at the end of her journey. Apparently the car of the defendant was not at a regular stopping place, but an appreciable distance away. The express invitation to the plaintiff by the agent of the defendant to change from one car to another under such circumstances and at that place imposed upon him the obligation to give her some warning of the danger which confronted her of stepping into the hole. While it is true that the “ street is in no sense a passenger station, for the safety of which a street railway
The defendant filed interrogatories to the plaintiff, which she was directed to answer. Some of these questions called for a detailed description of precisely how the accident happened. The plaintiff’s exceptions to being required to make these answers are rightly before us. Brooks v. Shaw, 197 Mass. 376" court="Mass." date_filed="1908-02-27" href="https://app.midpage.ai/document/brooks-v-shaw-6430127?utm_source=webapp" opinion_id="6430127">197 Mass. 376. The questions which she thus was compelled to answer were not competent under R. L. c. 173, § 57, as amended by St. 1909, c. 225, in that they required her to disclose the manner in which she proposed to prove her own case. Looney v. Saltonstall, 212 Mass. 69" court="Mass." date_filed="1912-05-24" href="https://app.midpage.ai/document/looney-v-saltonstall-6431835?utm_source=webapp" opinion_id="6431835">212 Mass. 69. See, however, St. 1913, c. 815. As these interrogatories were not offered in evidence, the plaintiff suffered no harm for which remedy can now be afforded except that two answers were used in cross-examination for the purpose of contradicting the plaintiff or showing that in the answers then made by her there were important omissions as compared with her testimony at the trial. It was improper to permit the plaintiff to be cross-examined respecting answers which she had been compelled to make, contrary to law.
Exceptions sustained.