Longacre v. Yonkers Railroad

191 A.D. 770, 182 N.Y.S. 373, 1920 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 4807
CourtAppellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
DecidedMay 14, 1920
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 191 A.D. 770 (Longacre v. Yonkers 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
Longacre v. Yonkers Railroad, 191 A.D. 770, 182 N.Y.S. 373, 1920 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 4807 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1920).

Opinion

Kelly, J.:

The infant plaintiff, five and one-half years of age, with his brother, seven years of age, were passengers upon one of the defendant’s street railroad cars on March 14, 1913. They were in charge of a nurse, a Polish girl speaking little English, who had been in the employ of plaintiff’s family for about a year preceding the accident. She had much difficulty in controlling the two children, who ran about the car and out upon the platform. The conductor put them back inside the car, but they would not obey the nurse. She chased them about the car and caught them, but they broke away from her from time to time and went out on the front platform. There is evidence that the motorman talked to them or joked with them. The nurse recovered them and brought them back in the car. As the car approached the terminal and was within fifteen or twenty feet of the end of the line, slowing up for its final stop, the motorman putting on the brakes, the boys got away from the nurse again, the elder boy went out on the front platform and jumped off the car. The plaintiff, the younger of the two, followed his.brother out on the platform and also jumped off the car, landing on his brother, which caused plaintiff to fall in such manner that his left leg went under the car wheel and was injured so that amputation was necessary between the ankle and the knee. The injuries alleged in the amended complaint are as follows: “ V. Upon information and belief that by reason of the said carelessness and negligence of the defendant and its employees in the operation of its said car the said plaintiff on or about the said 14th day of March, 1913, [773]*773upon, Park Avenue and between Douglass Avenue and Roberts Street was thrown or fell from said car and one of the wheels of said car so injured the lower part of his left leg that the same had to be amputated between the ankle and the knee; and that said plaintiff sustained other lacerations, abrasions and contusions of his body, together with severe shock to his nervous system and that he was confined to the hospital for a considerable length of time and was then and still is under the care of the doctor or surgeon, and said infant plaintiff still is and will forever be permanently maimed and injured.”

The plaintiff charges negligence on the defendant’s part because the vestibule side doors on the front platform were not closed at the time of the accident, and also because the doors leading from the body of the car to the front platform were open. Plaintiff insists that it was the duty of the motorman or conductor to close and latch these doors while carrying children and knowing that they were running up and down the car beyond the control of their nurse, and also in permitting the children to stand upon the front platform.

The learned trial justice charged the jury that while the defendant railroad company was not a guarantor or insurer of the safety of its passengers, it was bound to use a high degree of care. He submitted to them the question whether the motorman and conductor exercised the high degree of care that was required of them by reason of carrying the child as a passenger, and whether in view of the antics of the two children they should have closed the doors leading from the body of the car to the platform, as well as the vestibule doors on either side of the platforms. He said: The defendant claims that they had no rule requiring the employees to close the doors and that, therefore, the employees were not guilty of negligence in failing to obey a rule of the company, but that whether or not they would keep the doors closed was a matter left to their discretion; and if you find that in their discretion, good judgment, reasonable care would require them to close the doors, I have to charge you that it was negligence on their part if they did not so close them as required by reasonable prudence. The defendant says that this car was being operated slowly and carefully and in good order, sound condition, over firm tracks, so that there would not be [774]*774much jar stopping at curves; that finding the plaintiff in the car in the care of his nurse that all reasonable prudence required of them, notwithstanding the high degree of care they had to exercise, was to leave the plaintiff and his brother to the care of the nurse, and that they were justified as reasonably prudent men in so doing, and in leaving the child to the care of the nurse why they are not guilty of any negligence, and of course that ends that, because you would simply render a verdict for the defendant. But the claim of the plaintiff is, that, notwithstanding the presence of the nurse, that the fact that the two boys were running about the car was apparent to the two employees and that they might run into a place of danger was indicated to those employees by the fact that they had gone out on the back platform, that they were running about to different parts of the car, and that they were too lively for the nurse to absolutely control their movements; that she did not have them on a string, and that she could not completely control them by her hand, and that she did all that a reasonably prudent and capable nurse would do in caring for the children, and notwithstanding that she could not control them with reasonable care that it was the duty of these two employees to close the doors so that they, if they did move about the car, could not get out on the front platform, because the door leading there might be latched, or if they could get out on the front platform, because the door was open, that the other two doors would be closed so that they could not fall or jump off.”

The learned judge then told the jury that the plaintiff was too young to be charged with personal negligence and that it was the duty of his parents to see that he was left in care of a competent nurse, and that if the person in charge of the children was an unsuitable person, an incompetent person and could not manage the children and it was an unwise thing for the parents to put the children in her care, then the parents were guilty of negligence which was chargeable to plaintiff and he could not recover. He also instructed the j.ury that if the nurse, although competent, was negligent in caring for the children, the plaintiff could not recover. He continued: But here this plaintiff claims that this nurse was competent; that the parents are not guilty of negligence. Then it is claimed by the defendant that the nurse herself was guilty of [775]*775negligence, not only incompetent, but negligent, and even if she was competent she did not exercise the proper care that she was capable of exercising over the boys, but that she was not capable of exercising reasonable care over them, and that she was absolutely guilty of negligence in caring for them, in not making them sit down, in not keeping control over them. Well, if the nurse to whom the plaintiff was entrusted was guilty of negligence which contributed to the accident then you cannot find a verdict for this plaintiff.

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191 A.D. 770, 182 N.Y.S. 373, 1920 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 4807, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/longacre-v-yonkers-railroad-nyappdiv-1920.