Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Co. v. O'Conner

Citations

• 115 Ill. 254
• 3 N.E. 501
• 1885 Ill. LEXIS 547

Syllabus

<p>1. Negligence—master and servant—degree of care required of the latter. It is the duty of a person engaged to work in a dangerous place, to exercise a high degree of care, in view of the dangers to which he may be exposed; but the law does not require that he shall exercise the highest degree of care and caution to entitle him to recover for an injury received from the negligence of other servants and agents of his employer.</p> <p>2. Same—injury to a railway switchman—right of an engine-driver to assume that a switchman would get out of the way. A railway engineer was running his locomotive engine and cars thereto attached, within the limits of an incorporated town, at the speed of twenty miles an hour, when, under an ordinance, he had the right to run only at the rate of eight miles an hour, and while so running his train he saw a switchman running upon or near the track swinging a lantern. The switchman was struck by the engine and killed. It was held, in an action against the company to recover for the killing, that an instruction for the defence, to the effect that when the engineer saw the lantern of the switchman and others upon or near the track upon which he was running, he had the right to assume they would get out of the way of his engine before he reached them, was properly refused. It may be, if the train was running only at the rate of speed permitted by the ordinance, that he might then have assumed that the deceased might observe the approach of his train, and get out of the way; but as he was running at a high rate of speed at a place where the switchman was authorized to believe the approaching train would run only at the rate of eight miles an hour, the engine-driver had no right to assume that the switchman would get out of the way.</p> <p>3. Same—proper care and negligence as questions of law or fact. Whether a switchman engaged in the service of a railway company, and who is killed by an engine on a track while in the discharge of his duties