Van Vrankin v. Kansas City Elevated Railway Co.

Citations

• 84 Kan. 287
• 114 P. 202
• 1911 Kan. LEXIS 319

Syllabus

<p>SYLLABUS BY THE COURT.</p> <p>1. Personal Injuries — Damages—Amount of Award — Quotient Verdict. In an action by a woman twenty-three years of age for damages caused by being violently thrown from a street car, the testimony showing that as a result of the injury she was taken to a hospital, where she remained three weeks and where an operation was performed removing one ovary and resecting the other, and that she was rendered weak and nervous and unable to follow her former occupation and earn her former wages, a verdict for $10,933, while large, is not so excessive as to show passion and prejudice, nor does it show upon its face that it was the result of addition and division.</p> <p>2. - Contributory Negligence — Instructions—Applicability to the Issues. Where the plaintiff sues upon the allegation and theory that she was violently thrown from a street car by a sudden jerk before it had come to a full stop, the street-railway company not having pleaded contributory negligence, and asserting and trying the case upon the theory that the plaintiff’s injury occurred by a fall after she had safely left the car, held, that the failure of the court in its instructions to direct the attention of the jury to the plaintiff’s contributory negligence in attempting to alight while the car was in motion does not constitute reversible error.</p> <p>3. . — - Instructions — Enlargement of the Issues• — Immaterial Error. The day following the injury, while the plaintiff was suffering therefrom, an agent of the railway company procured from her a statement which she could not sign by reason of her injury, but which she directed a friend to sign, such statement being to the effect that the car suddenly started after it had come to a stop. After leaving the hospital she filed her original petition, containing a similar allegation. Some weeks thereafter, a deposition of the motorman having been taken, she filed an amended petition alleging that the injury occurred by reason of a su