Case ID: ny_246/html/0589-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Barbara Wagonblatt, as Administratrix of the Estate of Joseph Wagonblatt, Deceased, Respondent, v. Erie Railroad Company, Appellant.
    
      Negligence — railroads — trackwalker killed through derailment 0/ car.
    
    
      Wo,gonblalt v. Erie R. R. Co., 219 App. Div. 858, affirmed.
    (Argued October 14, 1927;
    decided November 22, 1927.)
    Appeal, by permission, from a judgment of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the fourth judicial department, entered April 19,1927, unanimously affirming a judgment in favor of plaintiff entered upon a verdict in an action to recover for the death of plaintiff’s intestate alleged to have been occasioned through the negligence of defendant. The plaintiff’s intestate was in the employment of the Dixon Construction Company which had a contract to maintain the defendant’s right of way at the place of the accident. It was the decedent’s duty to patrol the defendant’s tracks for a distance of a quarter of a mile to look out for landslides. The accident occurred on a steep grade between Dayton and Gowanda. The plaintiff’s intestate was standing in the doorway of a shanty on the defendant’s right of way when a freight train, operated by the defendant down this grade with eighty-five cars, parted after fifty-six cars and the engine had passed the shanty. The fifty-seventh car derailed crosswise on the track and fell upon the shanty, killing the intestate.
    
      John W. Ryan for appellant.
    
      Hamilton Ward and Dana L. Spring for respondent.
   Judgment affirmed, with costs; no opinion.

Concur: Cardozo, Ch. J., Pound, Crane, Andrews, Lehman and O’Brien, JJ. Not sitting: Kellogg, J.