Fetterolf v. Pennsylvania Railroad

Citations

• 232 Pa. 473
• 81 A. 539
• 1911 Pa. LEXIS 746

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Railroads—Grade crossing — “Stop, look and listen”— Proper place to stop — Negative and positive testimony as to signals.</p> <p>1. In an action against a railroad to recover damages for personal injuries the case is for the jury where plaintiffs’ testimony tends to show that they were riding in a huckster wagon, drawn by two horses, and approached a grade crossing on defendant’s railroad where there were two trades, that the track nearest them was a siding on which two trains were standing that obscured the view; that when the plaintiffs were about 400 feet from the crossing they looked and listened for a train and continued to look and listen as they advanced, that they stopped their team at the edge of the siding with the horses’ heads over the first rail, from which point they could see 270 feet in the direction from which the train that struck them came, and leaned forward and looked and listened for a train; and that, as they drove on, their wagon was struck about the middle by an engine running fifty miles an hour, of the approach of which no signal of any kind was given.</p> <p>2. In such a case, the question of defendant’s negligence requires submission to the jury where the testimony in relation to the failure to give any signal of the approach of the train, while flatly contradicted by a number of defendant’s witnesses, is not negative merely, by persons who had no occasion to observe, but of a positive character by witnesses who were listening.</p>