Lindenbaum v. New York, New Haven, & Hartford Railroad

84 N.E. 129, 197 Mass. 314, 1908 Mass. LEXIS 717
CourtMassachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
DecidedFebruary 26, 1908
StatusPublished
Cited by129 cases

This text of 84 N.E. 129 (Lindenbaum v. New York, New Haven, & Hartford Railroad) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Lindenbaum v. New York, New Haven, & Hartford Railroad, 84 N.E. 129, 197 Mass. 314, 1908 Mass. LEXIS 717 (Mass. 1908).

Opinion

Loring, J.

The two women plaintiffs, whom for convenience we shall speak of as the plaintiffs, were passengers on an outward bound subway car of the Boston and Northern Street [317]*317Railway Company, on the evening of July 9, 1902. This car passed from the subway on to Causeway Street until it came to the switch shown on the plan, which was set to throw outbound cars on to Beverly Street. A car on the inbound track, which

had come along Causeway Street, prevénted the plaintiffs’ car from going into Beverly Street. This inbound car was prevented from going ahead and getting out of the way of the plaintiffs’ car by a train on the Union Freight track. The Union Freight train did not stop in time, and ran into the rear end [318]*318of the plaintiffs’ car. The plaintiffs’ car was pushed around the switch into the inbound car and the two plaintiffs were injured by the collision.

1. The plaintiffs’ right to sue the two defendants jointly is settled by the recent case of Feneff v. Boston & Maine Railroad, 196 Mass. 575.

We will deal first with the exceptions taken hy the Boston and Northern Street Railway Company.

2. The Boston and Northern Street Railway Company rested on the plaintiffs’ evidence so far as liability was concerned.

Its contention is that on the plaintiffs’ evidence the cause of the cars coming together as they did was a matter of conjecture (as in Childs v. American Express Co., post, 337) and that the evidence of the plaintiffs did not go far enough to warrant a finding that the accident was caused by the negligence of the motorman of the defendant.

There was evidence that the engine of the train of the Union Freight Railroad Company, when first seen by the plaintiffs’ witnesses, was from fifteen to forty feet away from the rails of the inward bound track on Causeway Street. To make plain which is the inward and which the ontward bound track, it is to be understood that the railways using these street railway tracks ran on the right. The freight train was on the track between the Boston and Maine station and the Fitchburg station, and was going toward Causeway Street at the rate of three or four miles an hour. At this time the defendant’s car here in question was stopping, or had come to a stop, at the Beverly Street switch, and was blocked by an inward bound car which stood over the switch or so near to it as to prevent the car here in question from turning into Beverly Street. There was no evidence of any obstructions in the street. On this evidence the jury were warranted in finding that the defendant’s motorman, in the exercise of the care which this company owed to the plaintiffs, before he crossed the Union Freight track ought to have seen the train coming on the Union Freight track and the inward bound car coming west on the inward track, • and ought to have known the arrangement of the tracks and switches, and that if the switch was set for Beverly Street he would be caught in the trap he was caught in.

[319]*3193. The exception to the refusal to give the twenty-ninth and thirtieth rulings

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Bluebook (online)
84 N.E. 129, 197 Mass. 314, 1908 Mass. LEXIS 717, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/lindenbaum-v-new-york-new-haven-hartford-railroad-mass-1908.