Case ID: walker_4/html/0265-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Per Curiam.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

KNICKERBOCKER ICE CO. vs. BROOKS.
    Allowing a five year old child to cross a city street alone at a crossing is not necessarily negligence.
    A point reserved should aver facts which establish the specific negligence which contributed to the injury, to justify a judgment for the defendant.
    Error to Common Pleas No. 1, of Philadelphia county, No. 129 July Term, 1884.
    This was an action by James S. Brooks, against the Knickerbocker Ice Company, to recover damages for having run over his female child.
    The child was five years of age at the time of the accident, and was passing from Miller’s grocery store, on the southwest corner of Eighteenth and Reed streets, to the drug store on the southeast corner.
    An ice-wagon belonging to the Knickerbocker Ice Company was coming up Reed street from Seventeenth street, at a rapid rate of speed. A Union Passenger Railway car was passing along Reed street, going west, the same direction the wagon was going. The ice-wagon pulled out on the south side of the car, midway of the block. The car was behind time, and was going faster than generally. The ice-wagon passed the car just before reaching Eighteenth street, while the car was going at an increased rate of speed.
    The ice-wagon, while it was going out Reed street at this rapid rate of sp~ed, attempted to turn out of Reed street into Eighteenth street at the southeast corner. The child was on the flag-stones, crossing from the southwest corner to the southeast corner, and had passed the middle of the street, when the ice-wagon suddenly turned into Eighteenth street, and the pole of the wagon struck the child on the head, and knocked it down. The team turned suddenly.
    The driver of the wagon said, at the time of the accident, that “he didn’t see the child — he was looking some other way.”
    The child was not playing in the street, nor was it wandering in the street; it was crossing the street at a regular streetcr ssing.
    The defendant below requested the judge to charge that, “The plaintiff having allowed his child, only five years old, to go at large without a protector — this constitutes such negligence on his part as prevents him recovering for loss of services by reason of injuries to such child; and the verdict should be for the defendant.”
    This judge reserved this point for the Court in banc.
    The jury rendered a verdict for the plaintiff below for $1,150, and the Court in banc subsequently entered judgment against t le Ice Co. upon the reserved point; which ruling is assigned for error by the Ice Co., which took this writ of error.
    
      D. W. Sellers, Esq., for plaintiff in error,
    argued that it was negligence per se to allow this child to be on the street alone; Glassey vs. Railway Co., 57 Pa., 172; Smith vs. Railway Co., 92 Pa., 450.
    
      Messrs. J. H. Shakespeare, G. McGowan and J. N. Heverin, Esq., contra,
    argued that the facts assumed in the point were not admitted, but objected to by defendant, at the trial. Going from one house across a street at a crossing to another house, is not going at large upon the street without, a protector. That there was no contributory negligence on the part of the child, as there would have been none, if an adult had been injurel under the same circumstances.
   The Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the Common Pleas on April 6th, 1885, in the following opinion :

Per Curiam.

No error is assigned to the form of the reservation. It must therefore be considered and determined on the language thereof; In view of this fact there certainly was no error in entering judgment thereon in favor of the plaintiff below. The point would not justify any other judgment. It is very vague and indefinite. The specific place where the child was suffered to go at large is not mentioned. Nor is it stated where she was injured, nor that the injury was occasioned in consequence of her being allowed to go at large. The point should aver facts,. which by themselves establish the specific negligence which contributed to the injury, to justify the entry of a judgment in favor of the defendant below, non obstante veredicto. It cannot be bolstered up by adding thereto any outside facts.

Judgment affirmed.