Buente v. Pittsburg, Allegheny & Manchester Traction Co.

Citations

• 2 Pa. Super. 185
• 1896 Pa. Super. LEXIS 38

Syllabus

<p>Street railways — Negligence—Duty of motorman.</p> <p>A motorman should always be on the alert, especially so when passing a schoolhouse out of which has come a large body of children enjoying their liberty in the careless manner that is usual to them when released from school.</p> <p>Street railways — Negligence—Infant—Question for jury.</p> <p>It was proper to submit the question of negligence to the jury, when the evidence showed that the trolley car was running at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour, and that, having nothing to do at the time but to watch the street in front and to keep the car under control, the motorman instead of glancing from side to side kept his eyes fixed on the motions of one child on one side of the track to the exclusion of many others on the street.</p> <p>Street railways — Contributory negligence of parents — Infant.</p> <p>The fact that a parent left an infant aged three with other children in the kitchen in charge of a servant, who left them there to go to a grocery store a square distant, and that in her absence the infant wandered out on the street and railway track, where she was killed, does not disclose such contributory negligence on the part of the parent as would justify taking the question from the jury. This point was discussed and ruled under very similar conditions in Henne v. Railway, 1 Pa. Superior Ct. 811.</p> <p>Street railways — Obligations as to improved safety devices.</p> <p>It is the duly of railways to adopt the best precautions against danger in genei'al use, and which experience has shown to be superior and effectual, and to avail themselves of every such known safeguard or generally improved invention for lessening danger: Henderson v. Ry., 144 Pa. 461, followed.</p> <p>It is error, however, to tell a jury “ if they fail to adopt anything that a public use has indicated as being proper and which their own common sense if applied would teach them was proper and reasonably necessary, then their failure