Illinois Central Railroad v. Baches

Citations

• 55 Ill. 379

Syllabus

<p>1. Negligence—in railroads—mode of switching can's. A railroad company, in transferring two empty platform coal cars from the main to a side track, employed the mode known as the “running” or “flying switch,” which is done by attaching the cars designed to be thrown upon the side track to the engine, when the train is put in motion running toward the switch, and before it is reached, and when sufficient momentum to answer the purpose has been acquired, the engine is detached and run ahead of the train, and after it passes, the switch is changed, and the cars thus detached, by the momentum thus acquired, are carried along the side track to the point intended, it was held, in thus switching their cars in a populous part of a city of ten or twelve thousand inhabitants, crossing a traveled street and along an alley used by the public, the cars thrown upon the side track having a momentum which carried them at the rate of five miles an hour, the company were guilty of a high degree of negligence, and of which the fact that signals of alarm were given from the engine employed in the switching, intended for a person crossing the side track, who was injured by the cars, would not excuse them.</p> <p>2. And it was gross negligence on the part of the brakeman on the train not to be at the brakes to respond to the signal of “ down brakes,” given by the engineer, or being there, in failing to pul on the brakes. As the company had adopted such dangerous mode of switching, it was imperative that the brakeman should have been so situated as to sec in front of his train, and to have had full command of it, so as to have guarded, as far as possible, against inflicting injury.</p> <p>3. Contributory and comparative negligence. In an'action against a railroad company to recover for the death of a person occasioned by the alleged negligence of the defendants, an instruction which directed the jury, that in case they believed, from the evidence, that both the deceased and the agents