Carmody v. New York Central & Hudson River Railroad

146 A.D. 400, 131 N.Y.S. 160, 1911 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 1900
CourtAppellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
DecidedOctober 13, 1911
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 146 A.D. 400 (Carmody v. New York Central & Hudson River Railroad) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Carmody v. New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, 146 A.D. 400, 131 N.Y.S. 160, 1911 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 1900 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1911).

Opinion

Woodward, J.:

The plaintiff, a carpenter’s apprentice, aboiit twenty years of age, lost his right leg from about four inches below the knee, and his left foot, in an accident upon the defendant’s railroad on the 25th day of September, 1910. He was, at the time of the accident, engaged in stealing a ride upon one of defendant’s freight trains at or near One Hundred and Twenty-ninth street in the borough of Manhattan, and two radically-different theories of the accident were presented to the jury. The plaintiff’s theory was that the plaintiff had succeeded in catching onto the defendant’s freight train while at One Hundred and Thirty-first street; that he climbed up between the third and fourth cars from the engine- on a train consisting of forty-one cars, and that when he had reached a point where he was holding onto the iron handrail at the top of the car, about to climb upon the top of the car, the conductor of the train appeared from the rear end of the train, stepped over upon the car where the plaintiff was holding onto the rail, his face toward the engine, and began kicking the plaintiff’s fingers, forcing him to let go and to fall between the cars, with the result above stated. The defendant’s theory of the accident was that the plaintiff attempted to get onto the train at the. crossing of One Hundred and Twenty-ninth street, in company with some other boys; that while the plaintiff was running alongside of the train, in the direction in which the train was moving, looking over his shoulder for an opportunity to grab the handrail at the side of the car, another boy ran in front of him, intent upon the same object, and the two coming ' [402]*402together, the plaintiff was tripped and he fell under the wheels, producing the injuries for which the plaintiff has a verdict of the jury for $40,000.- The defendant, made the usual motion to set aside -the verdict under the provisions of - section 999 of the Code of Civil Procedure, and subsequently moved the court for a new trial, upon the ground of newly-discovered evidence, and from the order entered, denying the motion, the defendant appeals to this court. An appeal ■ is likewise taken from the judgment and order denying defendant’s motion to set aside the verdict.

Practically the only question raised on the appeal from the judgment is that the verdict is against the weight of evidence, and as both of the appeals are to he considered together it is proper first to look into the evidence to determine whether this. point is well taken. In considering a similar case, the court pointed out that the plaintiff was in the act of violating a penal statute, and that the defendant railroad company owed him no duty except not to wantonly injure him, and in discussing the rights of the defendant the court say: This case, it seems to me, will furnish a precedent for a new class of actions under the law of negligence, since any one, however careless or reckless, may, in defiance of the statute, board a. railroad freight train, and when the conductor undertakes to remove him, unless he uses all the circumspection and gentleness possible, the party removed may, upon his own testimony, recover against the railroad. We do not mean to say that this court can always prevent such results, since the questions are, in their nature, questions of fact to he determined at the trial and by the verdict of a jury. All that we mean to say now is that when a railroad company attempts to defend itself in a court of justice against such a claim as this, it • is entitled to the benefit of every fact and circumstance that can have any legitimate hearing upon the nature of the transaction, and it has the right to be accorded the benefit of every principle or rule of evidence that has any tendency to aid in its defense.” (Barrett v. N. Y. C. & H. R. R. R. Co., 157 N. Y. 663, 667.) One of the rules of evidence is that the plaintiff shall- establish his case by a fair preponderance of evidence; and where the weight, of evidence is against the verdict of the jury, there is a [403]*403failure to meet this condition, and the plaintiff is not entitled to recover, no matter how grievously he may have been injured.

In determining the weight of evidence we' should take into consideration the inherent probabilities of the case; the relative, likelihood of the two stories. Here are two distinct theories of this accident. In the one case there is absolutely no liability on the part of the defendant, while in the other the liability of the defendant depends solely upon the conduct of one of its servants, in which the servant must have violated his duty, not only to the plaintiff, but to the defendant, for it may not be assumed that the defendant ever authorized, even by implication, the commission of a crime, and the conduct alleged against the defendant’s conductor is nothing less than a crime. The evidence produced by the plaintiff has all of the “stage settings ” to bring it within the rule of liability laid down by the courts, but is lacking in that naturalness which accompanies entirely credible testimony; the witnesses testify with a sameness which might suggest careful preparation to meet not only the rule of liability, but the past criticisms of the courts in similar cases. The plaintiff has a vital interest in this case; his only hope of securing a large sum of money from the defendant is to establish that while he was himself engaged in the' commission of a crime, the defendant’s servant, by a higher crime, inflicted the injuries which he has sustained, and his principal supporting witness is his companion in that crime. Looking into the probabilities, we have the testimony of the plaintiff and his companion that they had never had any difficulty with the defendant’s conductor; that they had never seen him up to the very moment of the alleged assault, so that it must be evident that the only motive he could have had for committing any kind of an assault upon the plaintiff was the fact that the plaintiff was trying to steal a ride. No words were exchanged, according to the testimony of the plaintiff and his companion and under such circumstances it may be said that men do not usually assault boys of the age of the plaintiff; with more than half of a century of active railroad experience in this State, the instances in which assaults of this nature have béen committed are very rare, if we may judge . [404]*404from the adjudicated cases, and in none of them, havó the circumstances been of an equally dangerous character. In the most of the cases which have been decided the servants committing the assault have kicked or pushed the plaintiff off of the platform of a moving train, or have thrown missiles at the trespasser, but here we , are told that the plaintiff was between two cars of a long train, moving at the rate of twelve to fifteen miles per hour, and where a fall was almost certain to produce death, and we are asked to believe that the defendant’s conductor not only kicked at the plaintiff, but that he persisted in kicking the plaintiff’s knuckles until he was obliged to let go with both hands, an act of brutality so gross and unnatural, so full of criminal disregard for the,life of his fellow-men, that it would be difficult to believe the testimony if it were entirely undisputed.

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Related

Synott v. New York Central Railroad
220 A.D. 593 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1927)
Chapman v. George R. Read Co.
83 Misc. 16 (Appellate Terms of the Supreme Court of New York, 1913)
Carmody v. New York Central & Hudson River Railroad
138 N.Y.S. 1110 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1912)

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Bluebook (online)
146 A.D. 400, 131 N.Y.S. 160, 1911 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 1900, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/carmody-v-new-york-central-hudson-river-railroad-nyappdiv-1911.