Peterson v. Seattle Traction Co.

Citations

• 23 Wash. 615
• 63 P. 539
• 1900 Wash. LEXIS 397

Syllabus

<p>MASTER AND SERVANT-INJURY TO EMPLOYEE AFTER CLOSE OP WORK — LIABILITY OF MASTER.</p> <p>Where one is employed as a day laborer to lay track for a street railway company under a contract at so much per day and his transportation to and from his place of labor, at the cessation of his day’s work, he is no longer in the employ or under the control of his employer, and if he is injured while returning home on the company’s car at the close of his day’s work, by reason of the negligence of any of the company’s employees, the company is liable therefor, as the doctrine of the exemption of liability of a master to a servant for the acts of a fellow servant is inapplicable in his case, since at the time of the injury he was not acting in the service of his master.</p> <p>STREET RAILROADS-COLLISION — NEGLIGENCE.</p> <p>Where two cars meet in a head-end collision, on a single-track railway, it is negligence, which, in the absence of other showing, must be assumed as caused by the company’s employees in charge of the cars, who allowed them to come into collision, and hence imputable to their employer.</p> <p>PLEADING-DEMURRER — IMPERTINENT ANSWER.</p> <p>When the plaintiff has set up a contract in his complaint which has been answered by a general denial, it is competent for the defendant to put in evidence any material matter to defeat the alleged contract, and it may show a different contract; hence an affirmative defense setting up a different version of a contract than that alleged in the complaint cannot he construed as adding more than a general denial already made, and hence is properly demurrable.</p> <p>CONTRACT TOR TRANSPORTATION — LIMITATION OP CARRIER’S LIABILITY-WHEN ADMISSIBLE IN EVIDENCE.</p> <p>In an action by one injured while traveling upon an employee’s ticket to recover damages on account of defendant’s negligence, where it is an issue as to whether the contract for transportation was an unconditional one between the parties, a condition on the back of t