Case ID: ga_122/html/0368-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Lamar, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

WALKER v. GEORGIA RAILWAY AND ELECTRIC CO.
    If the plaintiff proved his case as laid, he disproved it on cross-examination, and showed that, without any emergency or necessity justifying the same, he voluntarily stepped from a rapidly moving car at night; and there was no error in granting a nonsuit.
    Argued February 3,—
    Decided March 7, 1905.
    Action for damages. Before Judge Calhoun. City court of Atlanta. April 28, 1904.
    Wilder sued for injuries sustained by him in stepping from a car of the defendant, on which he was a passenger. It was alleged that the conductor called the station at which he had requested to he put off, and that, believing, from the announcement, that it was safe to alight and that the car had stopped, he proceeded to step from it, when it was in motion, and received .certain physical injuries; that it was at night, and he supposed the noise and vibration of the car were caused by the air-brake under it, which made a sound and produced a vibration when the car was at rest, similar to that made by a car in motion. After testifying in chief to the facts stated in the petition, the plaintiff testified, that he saw the gate at Fort McPherson; that he did not know how fast the car was running when he stepped off, but it was running pretty fast. “ It hadn’t slowed up very much. It was running very nearly as fast as it had been all the way along there... It was running the way it had been coming down to the fort. It slowed up a little, but not much; not much from the way I fell. . . I saw the lights over there iuside the barracks.” A nonsuit, was granted and the plaintiff excepted.
    
      J. F. Golightly, for plaintiff. Rosser & Brandon, W. T. Colquitt, and B. J. Conyers, for defendant.
   Lamar, J.

The announcement of a station is not an invitation to step from a rapidly moving car. By the exercise of ordinary care the plaintiff could have avoided the consequences of what he claims to have been negligence on the part of the defendant. With full knowledge that the car was running at practically the same speed at which it hadi approached the station, and had barely begun to slow up, the plaintiff stepped therefrom without being forced to do so by the act of the conductor, or other emergency. Even if he proved his case as laid, he disproved it on cross-examination, and there was no error in granting a nonsuit.

Judgment affirmed.

All the Justices concur.