Chicago City Railway Co. v. O'Donnell

114 Ill. App. 359, 1904 Ill. App. LEXIS 424
CourtAppellate Court of Illinois
DecidedJune 3, 1904
DocketGen. No. 11,160
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 114 Ill. App. 359 (Chicago City Railway Co. v. O'Donnell) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Court of Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Chicago City Railway Co. v. O'Donnell, 114 Ill. App. 359, 1904 Ill. App. LEXIS 424 (Ill. Ct. App. 1904).

Opinion

Mr. Justice Baker

delivered the opinion of the court.

At the trial the plaintiff asked witness Rooney to describe the operation of a basket fender, how it is put on and how it is operated. The defendant objected to the question, the objection was overruled and exception taken. The witness then stated that the fender was attached to the front of the car, and so arranged that in case of emergency the gripman could press his foot on a plunger and thereby drop the fender upon the rail. Upon his cross-examination he stated that the basket fender operated by a plunger, was first used several months after the accident. There was no motion to strike out the testimony of the witness as to a basket fender operated by a plunger. Later in the trial the defendant called as a witness Davis, a car inspector of the defendant, who testified in chief that the defendant first put on the basket fenders September 2, 1899; that the fenders so put on worked with a plunger that dropped the fender upon the rail, and that the advantage of a basket fender with a plunger was, that in case of danger, by the gripman stepping- on the plunger, the fender was dropped down close to the rail so that a person would not get under it. It is now insisted that the court erred in overruling the objection of defendant to the question put to Rooney, because no fender operated by a plunger as described by him had at the time of the accident been invented ór put in use. This contention cannot be sustained, first, because the question was not improper. The answer, if improper, was so because the witness described, not a fender known, or in use at the time of, or before the accident, but one invented and put in use after that time, and there was no motion to strike out the testimony after that appeared. Second, because defendant’s witness Davis described the construction and operation of a basket fender operated by a plunger, and its advantages, more fully and in greater detail than did plaintiff’s witness Rooney.

It is contended that the court erred in giving to the jury for plaintiff this instruction: £l The court instructs you that if you believe from the evidence that there was not such a fender on the car in question as required by the ordinance of the city of Chicago, and if you further believe from the evidence that running said car without such fender was negligence on the part of the defendant under all the facts and circumstances shown in evidence" in the case, and that the absence of such fender was the proximate cause of the death of deceased, then you should find the defendant guilty,” because there was no evidence to warrant the jury in finding that the failure of the defendant to equip its car with the fender specified in the ordinance was negligence; or if there was evidence from which the jury might find that such failure constituted and was negligence there was no evidence to warrant them in finding that such negligence was a proximate cause of the death of plaintiff’s intestate. The ordinance was passed by the city council under the power conferred upon that body by the statute to regulate the use of the streets of the city, and was passed for th-e protection of persons. It is conceded that the defendant violated the ordinance. Such violation was prima facie evidence of negligence, evidence from which the jury might find the fact of negligence. Jupiter Coal Mining Co. v. Mercer, 84 Ill. App. 96; Shearman & Redfield on Negligence, 5th ed., sec. 13.

There is no direct or positive evidence that the failure of defendant to equip its cars with the fender specified in the ordinance, caused or contributed to the death of plaintiff’s intestate, and the question is, whether from the facts and circumstances in evidence, the jury were warranted in drawing the inference that such failure caused or contributed to his death. The deceased started to run diagonally across the track, in front of the car, was struck by the car, thrown to the ground, and when the car was stopped he was between the rails, about midway between the front and rear ends of the car, and in front of the grip lever. There was upon the car a Y-shaped fender made of wood and rubber. This fender was placed, not on the front end of the car, where the ordinance required the steel basket fender to be placed, but under, the front end of the car. The extreme forward point of the fender was fourteen inches behind the bumper and the ends were immediately in front of the fore wheels of the car. The Y-shaped fender was manifestly not intended to prevent a person who should be struck by a car from passing under the front end of the car, for the fender could not touch him until the front end of the car had passed over him. At most it could only be of use in preventing him from passing under the wheel or farther back under the car than the fender. The object of placing the steel basket fender on the front end of the car was to throw a person against whom the car might run to one side, or to take him up upon the fender, and thereby prevent him. from passing under the car at all. The fender that was on the car of defendant not only did not prevent the deceased from passing under the car, but permitted him to pass either over or under the fender, for he was found behind the fender. It is said that the plaintiff offered no testimony to show that the steel basket fender required by the ordinance ivas more efficient to prevent such an accident than the fender which was upon the car. Proof of the failure to use the fender required by the ordinance made a prima faoie case of negligence of the defendant. If the defendant sought to excuse the failure to comply with the ordinance by showing that there was on the car a fender, though not the fender required by the ordinance, it ivas for the defendant to show that such lender ivas as good or efficient as the fender required by the ordinance and not for the plaintiff to show that it ivas not so good nor so efficient. In our opinion the evidence was sufficient to require the court to submit to the jury, botli the question whether the failure of defendant to use the fender required by the ordinance amounted to and was negligence, and also the question whether such negligence if found by the jury, caused or contributed to the death of plaintiff’s intestate. And we are also of the opinion that the jury were warranted from the evidence in finding against the defendant, both the fact of negligence, and that such negligence caused or at least contributed to the death of plaintiff’s intestate.

It is assigned for error that the court refused to give for the defendant the following instruction: “The court instructs the jury, as a matter of law, that the defendant was not required to exercise toward the plaintiff’s intestate the highest degree of care, but the said defendant was only required to exercise toward the said plaintiff’s intestate ordinary care at the time and place of the accident in question, and ordinary care is such as a person of ordinary prudence would exercise under the same or like circumstances.

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Related

Goodhart v. Chicago City Railway Co.
167 Ill. App. 339 (Appellate Court of Illinois, 1912)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
114 Ill. App. 359, 1904 Ill. App. LEXIS 424, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/chicago-city-railway-co-v-odonnell-illappct-1904.