State ex rel. Scott v. Washington, Baltimore & Annapolis Electric Railroad

Citations

• 130 Md. 603

Syllabus

<p>Railway tracks: right of wayj exclusive property of railway; trespassers; injuries to—; passengers; ejectment of intoxicated—. Negligence: proximate cause; question for jury.</p> <p>In general,- what is the proximate cause of an injury, is a question of fact for the jury. p. 612</p> <p>Whoever does an illegal act is answerable for all the conser quences that ensue in the ordinary and natural course of events, though these consequences be immediately and directly brought about by the intervening agencies of others, provided such agencies were set in motion by the primary wrongdoer, or provided their acts causing the damage were the necessary or legal and natural consequences of the original wrongful act. p. 612</p> <p>But in order to warrant the finding that negligence, or an act of wanton wrong, was the proximate cause of an injury, it must appear that the injury was the natural and probable consequence of the negligence or wrongful act, and that it ought to have been foreseen, in the light of all the attendant circumstances. pp. 612-613</p> <p>The mere fact that a passenger under the influence of liquor was ejected from a car when he had proved to be a nuisance and had refused to pay his fare, does not render the company liable for his subsequent injury received on the company’s tracks a mile or two further on from where he was ejected, when it apjreared that the passenger had considerable strength, where there was no evidence of any mental unsoundness and when he seemed thoroughly able to take care of himself. pp. 615-616</p> <p>Tbe death of the passenger so ejected in broad daylight on tracks, with which he was perfectly familiar, was: Held, not to be the natural and probable consequences of his ejectment.</p> <p>p. 616</p> <p>A right of way of a railroad company is its exclusive property, persons undertaking to use a railway as a footway do so at their own risk; and the mere acquiescence of the railroad company in such user does not give or create any obligat