Pennsylvania Railroad Co.'s Case

Citations

• 213 Pa. 373
• 62 A. 986
• 1906 Pa. LEXIS 488

Syllabus

<p>Railroads■ — Safety gates — Boroughs—Ordinance—A ct of April 3,1851, P. L.' 320 — Powers of borough.</p> <p>A borough organized under the general borough Act of April 3, 1851, P. L. 320, has no power to require a railroad company at the latter’s expense to erect, maintain and operate safety gates at street crossings in the borough.</p> <p>Municipal corporations possess and can exercise only such powers as are granted in express words or are necessarily or fairly implied in or incident to those expressly granted, or those which are indispensable to the declared objects and purposes of a municipality.</p> <p>In the operation of its road and in the running of its cars the judgment of the board of directors of a railroad company, in the absence of statutory provision, is supreme and exclusive. The public safety imperatively requires that there be no division of this great responsibility with others, — ■ not even with municipalities through whose limits railroads may run — for division of it would be the shifting of it in every case of accountability for failure to properly operate the road or run the cars. But while this is true, corresponding duties of the highest order are imposed exclusively upon those having the control and management of railroads. One of these is to adopt and use suitable and adequate means to give notice of approaching trains at grade crossings, which are always more or less dangerous, and the failure to perform this duty is negligence, for the consequences of which those are responsible upon whom it is imposed. What particular means, however, shall be employed to protect the public when using streets or highways at railroad crossings is left to the company operating the road, the law merely demanding and requiring reasonable care in view of all the circumstances. There is no common-law duty on the part of the company to station a flagman or erect gates at a crossing; but the failure of the company to do so is to be considered with other facts