Malott v. Union Pacific Railroad

Citations

• 99 Kan. 115
• 160 P. 978

Syllabus

<p>SYLLABUS BY THE COURT.</p> <p>1. Trespassers — Crossing Railway Switch Yards — No Public Way. No public way is established, across a railway switch yard merely because pedestrians for many years had so frequently trespassed thereon that they had worn a beaten path across it.</p> <p>2. Trespassers — In Railway Switch Yards — Duty of Railway Company. One who undertakes to cross a railway switch yard of many railway tracks, where engines and cars are likely to be moving at any time in the regular course of the railway’s business, is a trespasser and does so at his peril, and the only duty of the railway company and its employees towards such trespasser is not to willfully injure him.</p> <p>3. Same. In a Kansas City suburb the defendant railway company has a switch yard of many tracks upon which engines and cars move to and fro frequently. For many years it has been common for people to cross the switch yard notwithstanding a warning sign, “Railroad property, no trespassing,” the ever-impending danger of such hazardous crossing, and a safe public highway over a viaduct across the switch yard nearby. A plain path across the tracks had been worn by such travel. When cars impeded such travel, such pedestrians would go around the cars or over or under them. The plaintiff who was one of these pedestrians was injured while thus crossing the switch yard. Held,, that in the absence of evidence that his injuries were caused by the willful neglect of the defendant or its employees, he can not recover from the railroad company.</p>