Walsh v. Altoona & Logan Valley Electric Railway Co.

Citations

• 232 Pa. 479
• 81 A. 551
• 1911 Pa. LEXIS 748

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Street railways — Motorman inattentive — Plaintiff jumping from wagon under fear of collision — Contributory negligence — Imputed negligence — Test of negligence of passenger in a private conveyance.</p> <p>1. In an action to recover damages for personal injuries the case is for the jury where they could find from the evidence that the plaintiff was riding in a wagon, outside of and parallel to defendant’s tracks on a city street, that as the team approached the corner of an intersecting street, where the tracks made a short turn into the intersecting street, and where the view at the intersecting street was obstructed by houses, and attempted to cross the tracks, a car came around the curve without sounding any signal and struck the wagon; that the motorman of the car was looking across the street instead of along the track as the car turned the curve and was not aware that the team was crossing until the conductor rang the bell at the suggestion of a passenger on the rear platform; and that the plaintiff, seeing the car coming and fearing a collision, jumped from the wagon and seriously injured her ankle.</p> <p>2. If, in such a case, the plaintiff, without her fault, was placed in danger of a collision between the wagon and the car by the negligence of the defendant company and she had a well grounded fear that the collision would result in serious injury to her, she, if acting in good faith and as a person of ordinary prudence, was not guilty of negligence in leaping from the wagon to escape the threatened danger, although it was not the safest or wisest course to pursue.</p> <p>3. In such a case, where it appears that the plaintiff was the guest of her father and that the team was driven by her brother who was not her servant or under her control, the negligence of the driver of the wagon, if any, cannot be imputed to her.</p> <p>4. The test of plaintiff’s contributory negligence, in such a case, is whether she joined in testing a patent danger