Palmer v. Warren Street Railway Co.

Citations

• 206 Pa. 574
• 56 A. 49
• 1903 Pa. LEXIS 764

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Street railways — Passenger—Presumption—Collision.</p> <p>The case of a passenger injured by a collision between two street cars of the same company is within the unbending rule applicable to railroad and passenger railway companies alike, that where a passenger on a car is injured without fault of his own, there is a legal presumption of negligence, easting upon the carrier the onus of rebutting it; and it is immaterial that the collision was not due to any defect in the car on which the plaintiff was riding or the machinery connected with it, but to a broken appliance on the car that ran into it.</p> <p>Negligence — Street railways — Passenger—Presumption—Jumping from ear.</p> <p>A well grounded fear that a collision is about to take place which will result in fatal or even serious injury to a passenger, is a justification to him to leap from the car. and the presumption of the common carrier’s negligence is not confined to the case of injuries resulting from actual collision, but extends to those caused by an effort to escape it, when made on a well grounded belief that it will occur.</p> <p>Negligence — Street railways — Measure of carer — Carriers—Passengers.</p> <p>The utmost care and vigilance are required on the part of the carrier. This rule does not require the utmost degree of care which the human mind is capable of imagining, but it does l’equire that the highest degree of pi-actical care and diligence should be adopted that is consistent with the mode of transportation adopted. Railway passenger carriers are bound to use all reasonable precautions against injury of passengei-s; and these pi-ecautions are to be measured by those in known use in the same business which have been proved by experience to be the most efficacious.</p> <p>It is not negligence on the part of a street railway company to run two cars towards each other on the same track.</p> <p>• Pfeghgenee — Evidence—Damages—Permanent injury — Ability.</p> <p>In an accident case,