St. Louis, Alton & Chicago Railroad v. Dalby

19 Ill. 353
CourtIllinois Supreme Court
DecidedDecember 15, 1857
StatusPublished
Cited by27 cases

This text of 19 Ill. 353 (St. Louis, Alton & Chicago Railroad v. Dalby) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Illinois Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
St. Louis, Alton & Chicago Railroad v. Dalby, 19 Ill. 353 (Ill. 1857).

Opinion

Catón, C. J.

Some questions of minor importance will be disposed of before we come to the main and important question, which has most engrossed the attention of counsel and the court.

The first of these is, whether the court erred in admitting the testimony of Rankin, the station agent, and the certificate- or written statement, given by Rankin to Dalby, at the time the latter applied for tickets and could not procure them. This involves the right of the railroad company to charge discrimi-nating fares, and under what circumstances it may do so. The law on that subject as held by this court, and which is now adhered to, is defined in the case of The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company v. Parks, 18 Ill. R. 460. In that case, this court said, “ Nor do we think it unreasonable or unjust that the company should charge more for passengers who-neglect to get tickets, and in consequence compel the conductors to collect their fares in the cars. This is but a reasonable penalty for the neglect of the passenger, and a just compensation for the additional inconvenience to which the company is subjected by being compelled to receive the fare by the hands of the conductor. That it is sensibly and appreciably more to the advantage of the company to have the fares paid to the station agents, who issue tickets therefor, than to the conductors, our common observation, has convinced us. But to justify the company in making this discrimination in the fare against a passonger who neglects to purchase a ticket at the company’s office, the company must see to it that the fault was not that of its own agent instead of the passenger. To justify this discrimination, every reasonable and proper facility must be afforded the passenger to procure his ticket. It must furnish a convenient and accessible place for the sale of tickets, with a competent person in attendance, ready to sell them, which should be open and accessible .to all passengers for a reasonable time before the departure of each train, and up to the -time of its actual departure, so that it shall really be a case of neglect and not of necessity on the part of the passenger, and not the fault of the company. If a company well keep its ticket office closed till a crowd of clamorous passengers have gathered around, so as to make it dangerous or inconvenient for females or infirm persons to get tickets, .-surely the fault is not theirs, but the company’s, if they do not procure tickets ; and under such circumstances, to charge them more than the price established for tickets, would be but an imposition and an outrage which the law cannot sanction.” We are aware that, in the case of Crocker v. New London Railroad Co., 24 Conn. R. 249, Sandford, J., held, with the concurrence of Waite, 0. J., that the ticket agent might close his office at any time; and that thereby, the proposition of the railroad company to the public, to sell tickets at fifty cents, was withdrawn, and, for the time being, the company only occupied the position of offering to carry passengers over, that route at fifty-five cents. That beeame the universal fare during the time the office was closed. We confess this seems to-us.too much like trifling with the public. The same principle would allow the station agent to charge sixty cents one day for the same ticket, and the next -day sixty-five cents, provided he could prove that to be a reasonable fare. It makes the whim or caprice or even neglect of e-very agent the solemn act of the company, to change every hour .the tariff of charges, held out to the public as the price of a particular service. It utterly destroys this doctrine >of uniformity of charges, which however, they evidently recognized as good -law, and intended not to disturb. But two others of the judges, Stores and Human, did not concur with Sanford upon this part of the case, and held with us, that the company must afford reasonable facilities to get tickets, and that it must be the fault of the passenger and not of the company, to authorize the extra charge for the want of a ticket.

We adhere to the rule laid down in -the 18 Ill. R., and what was said in that case in vindication of the rule is particularly applicable to this case. Here the passenger applied to the station agent for tickets, and was told that he was out of tickets and could sell him none, and gave the passenger a written statement to that effect, to show to the conductor, and also told the conductor, personally, the same fact. And the objection is, that the plaintiff was allowed to prove these facts by the station agent. Indeed we are entirely unable to comprehend the least sort of objection to the facts proved or the mode of proof. Every particle of this evidence was precisely to the point that it was not the fault of the passenger that he had not got tickets, and that he had neglected no precaution to bring the knowledge of this home to the conductor. The written memorandum of the station agent was not used for the purpose of establishing the fact that the passenger had applied for tickets and could not procure them. That fact was shown by the testimony of the agent and several other witnesses on the trial, in their oral testimony. The writing was an independent fact of itself, and used as such, for the purpose of bringing home to the knowledge of the conductor, the truth, that the passenger had done all he could to procure tickets, and thereby had entitled himself to the right to ride at the ticket fare. But even had it been offered as original evidence to prove the primary fact that it stated, we are not now prepared to say that it was not competent to prove it. Had it stated that the passenger had paid his fare, instead of stating the reason why he had not done so, then it would have become a ticket, as well as if it had been a printed, one usually sold; and it will hardly be denied that a ticket sold by a station agent is not evidence of itself that the passenger has paid his fare. But, be this as it may, it was competent for the purpose of showing that the conductor was informed that the fault for his not having a ticket was that of the company, and not of the passenger.

The jury had a right .to find, from the evidence and the instructions in this case, that the general superintendent of this road had ordered his conductors to charge all passengers, who had not tickets, no matter from what cause, one cent per mile more than the price established for tickets, and to remove from the cars all who should refuse to pay the fare thus demanded. We are satisfied, we say, from the evidence, that the jury were authorized to come to these conclusions, and unless they had so found, they could not have returned the verdict which they did. They must also have found, further, that the conductor, in pursuance of such general orders, did attempt to remove the plaintiff from the cars, when, by the law as laid down by the court, he had no right to do so. Upon this point, indeed, there was no room for controversy; for, as we have already seen, the passenger had done all he could to get tickets, which the conductor knew from a source which he could not doubt, and then the plaintiff offered to pay the price of a ticket, which the conductor refused, and demanded the extra cent per mile, and because he refused to pay this, the conductor and two brakemen committed the assault. The evidence indeed shows a most brutal and outrageous assault and battery, which is calculated to excite the feelings of indignation against the conductor and brakemen, and there was no doubt great danger that the jury might extend that feeling to the railroad company also.

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Bluebook (online)
19 Ill. 353, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/st-louis-alton-chicago-railroad-v-dalby-ill-1857.