Baltimore & Potomac Railroad v. Swann

Citations

• 81 Md. 400
• 31 L.R.A. 313
• 32 A. 175
• 1895 Md. LEXIS 54

Syllabus

<p>Carriers — Negligence—Injury to Passenger Carried in a Baggage' Car — Right of Ticket Holder — Presumption of Negligence.</p> <p>A party who buys a railroad ticket acquires a right to be conveyed to his destination in one of the carrier’s passenger coaches.</p> <p>If the carrier, being unable from causes beyond his control, to provide a passenger coach, according to its contract, substitutes a baggage car, and in the course of the journey, by reason of some fault in the vehicle, the passenger is injured, the carrier is liable therefor, unless it can show that it exercised the utmost care and diligence, and that the baggage car was a safe conveyance.</p> <p>In such case it cannot be imputed to the passenger as negligence, or as an assumption of the risk, that he took passage in the baggage car, when no other means of conveyance were offered.</p> <p>Whether in this case the carrier made diligent effort to procure a passenger coach, and whether the baggage car was a safe vehicle, are proper questions to be submitted to the jury.</p> <p>And in this case a prayer based upon a comparison between the injuries complained of by the plaintiff as received in the baggage car and those that might have been suffered in a passenger coach, should be rejected, because altogether conjectural.</p> <p>The fact that a passenger is injured while travelling on a train of defendant is prima facie evidence of negligence, throwing upon the carrier the burden of showing that the injury could not have been prevented by the exercise of the utmost care and diligence on its part.</p>