Del Rossi v. Cooney

Citations

• 208 Pa. 233
• 57 A. 514
• 1904 Pa. LEXIS 734

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Infant—Parent and child — Duty of care.</p> <p>Parents oWe the duty of protection to their child of tender years, and they inust exercise care to prevent it being exposed to danger in order to relieve themselves from the charge of contributory negligence if the child is injured through the fault of another. When, therefore, a parent seeks to charge a negligent defendant with injury to his child, it must appear that he has used the care towards it demanded of him by the circumstances. The care thus required, however, is only such as persons of reasonable prudence of the same class and with the same means ordinarily exercise and deem adequate to protect their children from danger.</p> <p>In an action to recover damages for the death of a child four years old run down by a wagon in a street, the parents rebut the presumption of negligence arising from the fact that the child was on the street alone at the time of the accident, by evidence to the effect that they were very poor people living in a court, that the family consisted of the parents and three children of tender age, that the father’s work kept him from home in the daytime, that the father had erected a fence around the yard in front of his house to prevent his children going on the street, that the exit from the yard was through a gate, the latch of which was beyond the reach of the children, and that the father had forbade the children from going on the street alone.</p>