Willey ex rel. Willey v. Maine Central Railroad

18 A.2d 316, 137 Me. 223, 1941 Me. LEXIS 8
CourtSupreme Judicial Court of Maine
DecidedFebruary 18, 1941
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 18 A.2d 316 (Willey ex rel. Willey v. Maine Central Railroad) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Judicial Court of Maine primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Willey ex rel. Willey v. Maine Central Railroad, 18 A.2d 316, 137 Me. 223, 1941 Me. LEXIS 8 (Me. 1941).

Opinion

Hudson, J.

The plaintiffs except to orders of nonsuit and exclusions of testimony. The occasion of these actions was a lamentable accident that occurred on the twenty-fifth day of April, 1939, on the main line of the defendant company in the City of Brewer. Everett, six years old, who sues by next friend, was run over by its work train engine and received serious injuries necessitating the amputation of his right leg below his knee. For his personal injuries his suit is brought. His father, Henry, sues to recover expenses.

All directions herein given are taken from a sketch (no plan in the record), Plaintiffs’ Exhibit No. 2, not drawn to scale nor purporting to show exactly the points of compass. If “north” as therein it appears is not correctly indicated, still there would be no relative change of position which would affect the issues in this case.

The accident happened about twenty minutes of one in the afternoon as Everett was on his way to school. His home was on the southerly side of Parker Street west of side track No. 5. Parker Street, running generally east and west, crosses this side track, and [225]*225a very short distance to the east the Bucksport branch, and a bit farther east the main line of the defendant company running from Bangor to Calais. Parker Street is located between two other streets, Wilson on the south and Center on the north. At all three of these street crossings were silent flashing signals then operating and manipulated by the defendant’s employee, one Crocker, who for that purpose had a shack at the southeast corner of the Parker Street crossing. At its northeast corner was a switch, where the Bucksport branch left the main line proceeding southwesterly. The accident did not take place at any one of these street crossings-but on the main line between Parker and Center Streets probably about 165 feet northerly of the shack and from 130 to 150 feet northerly of Parker Street crossing.

In the immediate vicinity of the place of accident there was a path running generally east and west. Whether it crossed the main line was in dispute, but taking the testimony most favorably for the plaintiffs, as here we must, it will be assumed that it did extend on both sides of the track. From it the path led easterly through a field and was used by children in going to arid from school. Westerly of where it was claimed the path crossed the main line were two coal cars on track No. 5. The distance at this point between track No. 5 and the main line was approximately twelve paces.

Everett was in his first year in the Page School located near the high school some six or seven hundred feet easterly of the main line. After noon dinner at home, he went out to play with some other boys a bit older and then they started for school. Instead of going by Parker Street over the railroad crossing they took a short cut not on any street and when they had reached a pile of ties or sleepers on the easterly side of the main line just southerly of the path, Everett decided to go back to a neighbor’s house to get his mask which he had forgotten. This was a cloth affair with eye-holes in it. (He had it on at the time of the accident.) Having gotten it, he started back for school by the same route. When he reached the coal cars on track No. 5, he went around their north end and there he observed the work train which, in order for a regular train to pass on the main line, had been switched onto the Bucksport branch. He said it was standing still “Down by the switch,” but when he started from the coal cars to go across the main line, it had started and was distant [226]*226frOm him about eleven paces. Then he was about the same distance from the main line. Nevertheless, he continued on, thinking he had time to' cross in safety. He tripped on the easterly rail, fell down, and while down was run over by the engine.

This work train, besides the engine and caboose, had some fourteen or fifteen cars and for a crew, besides the engineer and the fireinan, a conductor and two brakemen. At the time of the accident, Crocker was in his shack performing his duties as signal tender. According to his testimony, when the engine proceeding at-five or six miles an hour passed by him its bell was ringing, but whether it was ringing when the boy was hit he could not say for certainty because of the noise of the train between.

The record discloses that the locus of the accident was in an industrial portion of the city somewhat residential, and that with knowledge of Mr. Crocker very many children of all ages (many of whom, including Everett, had been warned by him) in going to and from school crossed these tracks wherever they saw fit and without express objection upon the part of the railroad company. Everett admitted, however, that he knew it was dangerous to go across the tracks except at crossings and that his father and mother had told him not to cross at other places.

The contention of the plaintiffs is that Everett had the status of an implied invitee to whom the defendant owed the duty of due care, while the defendant asserts that he was only a trespasser or at most a bare licensee to whom the company owed the duty simply to refrain from wilful, wanton, or reckless acts of negligence. Of that kind of negligence we find no evidence in this record. The railroad company defends the orders of nonsuit in particular on the ground that it breached no duty owed to Everett. “There can be no negligence where there is no duty.” Bowden v. Derby, 97 Me., 536, 539, 55 A., 417, 418; Leighton v. Wheeler, 106 Me., 450, 452, 76 A., 916. And a declaration without allegation of facts sufficient to reveal the duty is defective and demurrable. Hone et al. v. Presque Isle Water Company, 104 Me., 217, 71 A., 769.

Plaintiffs’ counsel relies upon the decision in Collins v. Maine Central Railroad Company, 136 Me., 149, 4 A. 2d, 100. He contends that the facts in this record pictured a situation from which the jury could have found that the railroad company impliedly invited [227]*227Everett to cross the tracks where he made his attempt so to do. But we think otherwise and consider the Collins case distinguishable. That was a street railroad crossing accident case; this is not. There a particular way was concerned that to the knowledge of the railroad company had been in general use by the public as a railroad crossing, on which the railroad itself had done work for the benefit of the travelling public: it had graded and planked it. This court said on page 153 of 136 Me., on page 103 of 4 A., 2d,

“Our conclusion, then, is that, while an unobjected use by the public of a railroad crossing alone is not enough to establish an implied invitation, there may be facts as to its construction, maintenance, and use that will warrant a jury in finding such an invitation and such facts present, as said in Black v. Central R. Co., supra, ‘a question for the jury under proper instructions____’”

In that case it appeared that the company itself had done something to create “appearances” reasonably interpretable as an invitation for use by the public. The most that the facts here warrant as a finding is that the railroad company had knowledge of the habit of these school children to cross these tracks between street crossings, to which it made no express objection, but that alone would not justify an inference of an implied invitation. In Chenery v. Fitchburg Railroad, 160 Mass., 211, 35 N.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
18 A.2d 316, 137 Me. 223, 1941 Me. LEXIS 8, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/willey-ex-rel-willey-v-maine-central-railroad-me-1941.