Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad v. Dignan

Citations

• 56 Ill. 487

Syllabus

<p>Negligence in a, railroad — and herein of contributory negligence. In an action against a railroad company to recover for personal injuries received by the plaintiff, from being run over by a train of cars on the defendants’ road, it appeared the defendants and another company used the same grounds in the city of Chicago, the main tracks of the two roads being between six and seven feet apart. The plaintiff, being a track repairer, in the employ of the latter company, was engaged, with two other men, in replacing a rail on the track of this company, when a train of freight cars, which was being pushed backward, approached the workmen, unobserved by them until nearly upon them, when they heard the shouting of a brakeman on the rear car, and hastily jumped backward to the end of the ties on the track of defendants. While standing there waiting for the train to pass, the plaintiff and one cd his fellow-laborers were struck by two freight cars belonging to defendants, and the plaintiff was severely injured. These cars .were moving in the same direction as the train on the other road, by their own momentum, having been uncoupled from a train while in motion, and left quietly to run along the track without any person upon them to check their motion or to give an alarm : Mel<l, the defendants were guilty of negligence in running their cars in the manner indicated, but the plaintiff was not chargeable with such negligence as would bar his recovery because of his omission, under the excitement and alarm of the occasion, to look along the track of defendants’ road to see if there might not be a train approaching, although he had time to do so before the collision.</p>