Seltzer v. Philadelphia & Reading Railway Co.

Citations

• 69 Pa. Super. 309
• 1918 Pa. Super. LEXIS 386

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Railroads—Passengers—Stations — Alighting from train.</p> <p>A railroad company owes to its passengers intending to leave or board a train at a station, a safe means of exit and approach within the space ordinarily and customarily used in connection with the station. Its obligation to protect passengers does not extend beyond the limits of what may properly be considered station facilities or grounds.</p> <p>Where a railroad company undertakes the transportation of passengers for an agreed price, the contract includes many things. The passenger agrees to be bound by all the company’s reasonable rules and regulations for entering, occupying and leaving trains, and if injury befalls him by reason of disregard of the regulations which are necessary for the conduct of the business, the company will not be liable, even though the negligence of one of its servants concurred in causing the mischief.</p> <p>When a railroad company has provided safe and convenient means of ingress and egress to and from its trains upon one side of its track, it has in this particular discharged its whole duty to passengers, and it is not bound to anticipate that in disregard of its reasonable and known regulations, they will alight from the opposite side.</p> <p>An occasional alighting and discharging of passengers on the wrong side will not establish a custom permitting passengers to leave on the side opposite to where they are required to leave, or on the nonplatform side. There should be evidence of such continuous use for a period of time that the company’s assent to such use may be lawfully inferred.</p> <p>Where a railroad company has completed the transfer of passengers and is in the act of making up a train before leaving, it is not required in the shifting, or making up of the train, to continuously keep a brakeman at the door of the train to keep passengers from alighting on the wrong side.</p> <p>Where an employee of a railroad company who is a passenger on an empl