Girton v. Lehigh Valley Railroad

Citations

• 17 Pa. Super. 143
• 1901 Pa. Super. LEXIS 266

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Railroads—Grossing tracks at station.</p> <p>The rule to “ stop, look and listen” is not always applicable to passengers leaving a train and crossing a track to reach the depot at the point of destination. There are duties which spring from the relation existing between the carrier and its passengers. It is the duty of the company to provide for the safe receiving and discharge of passengers. It is bound to exercise the strictest diligence not only in carrying them to their destination, but also in setting them down safely, if human care and foresight can do so.</p> <p>It is not necessarily negligent for a railroad company to run a train into a station where another train is receiving or discharging passengers, but circumstances may make it so, and whether running an express train at a high rate of speed into a station at approximately the moment of time a local train is discharging passengers, can be called negligence, is for the jury to say.</p> <p>Failure to look for trains when crossing a track in passing from train to station is not necessarily negligent. The circumstances of the case must determine whether this is so or not. The railroad company is bound to provide a way by which passengers may pass in safety. If the way provided crosses a track, no train should be permitted to pass over at the point where passengers are required to cross it while a train on the opposite track is receiving and discharging passengers.</p> <p>In an action against a railroad company to recover damages for the death of a young child, a verdict and judgment for plaintiff will be sustained where the evidence tends to show that the mother and the child alighted from a train on the far track from a station ; that between the place where the plaintiff and child alighted and the station platform the roadway had been filled with cinders and ashes, and that this was the way provided by the company for passengers to cross the track; that plaintiff saw other passengers direc