Nye v. Pennsylvania Railroad

Citations

• 178 Pa. 134
• 35 A. 627
• 1896 Pa. LEXIS 1142

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Railroads—Master and servant — Risk of employment.</p> <p>As track repairing or track cleaning after a snowstorm in the vicinity of moving trains is intrinsically a dangerous occupation, the fair presumption is not only that men who engage in it take the risks of their employment, but that they are competent to keep themselves out of manifest and unnecessary exposure to danger.</p> <p>In an action against a railroad company to recover damages for the death of one of its employees, it appeared that the deceased was killed while engaged in cleaning the tracks of snow in order to release a train which had become snow-bound. At the point where the accident occurred there were two tracks seven feet apart, and the deceased was directed to work on track No. 1. The deceased was killed by a delayed express train on track No. 2. The uncontradicted evidence of the superintendent was that owing to the stormy character of the day extra men were employed to keep the tracks clear of the snow; that he had at least one hundred gangs scattered along the road, engaged in this work, and that it would . have been impracticable to give the engineer of the delayed express train information that would have been of any use as to the gang in which deceased was employed, because the train which it was sent to release might have moved one hundred feet or a mile in ten minutes. Held, (1) That there was no evidence of negligence on the part of the railroad company sufficient to submit to the jury; (2) that the deceased had taken the risk of his employment; (8) that if, owing to the weather, the danger was greater than usual the railroad company was entitled to rely on the presumption that the deceased would not unnecessarily incur the danger.</p>