Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/213/1/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 17:59:41+00:00

Document:
Although defendant may have been originally in fault, an entirely independent and unrelated cause subsequently intervening, and of itself sufficient to have caused the mischief, may properly be regarded as the proximate cause of plaintiff's injuries. Insurance Co. v. Tweed, 7 Wall. 44.
An unsuccessful attempt to replace a child on a railroad car held in this case to be the proximate cause of injury to the child notwithstanding such attempt was made as the result of the child's mother's having been prevented from getting off the car by the negligence of the railway employees.
Failure to foresee and provide against extraordinary and unreasonable risks taken by other persons cannot be regarded as negligence, and so held that a railroad company was not liable for negligence to one who, in a reckless effort to run after and board a rapidly moving train, stumbled on a truck which had been left by an employee at a place where ordinarily no passengers got on or off the cars.
against the plaintiff in error, hereafter called the defendant, to recover damages suffered by him on account of an injury alleged to have resulted from the negligence of the defendant. He had judgment, which was affirmed by the supreme court of the territory, and the case is now here upon a writ of error directed to that court. The trial was by a jury, and, as one question of law before us is whether a verdict for the plaintiff was warranted, the evidence is reported in full. In returning a general verdict for the plaintiff, the jury also made special findings in response to 57 questions submitted to it, in accordance with the practice permitted in the territory. The only question of law which it is deemed necessary to determine is whether all the evidence, with the inferences which might properly be drawn from it, sustained the verdict for the plaintiff, upon the issue submitted to the jury. Instead of setting forth fully the material parts of the evidence, it seems better, with the aid of the special findings, to state the facts which it tended to prove. In hardly need be said that, wherever there is a fair doubt, that aspect of the evidence most favorable to the plaintiff has been accepted.
son, whom he had met at the station, returned to the steps of the car, and told Mrs. Calhoun not to jump off, as the car was running too rapidly. The station platform was dimly lighted, and no employee of the defendant rendered Mrs. Calhoun or her boy any assistance in leaving the train, nor gave them any warning.
The plaintiff was landed without injury on the station platform and put in the charge of Mr. Robertson's son by his father, who said: "Keep the child and the train will stop and let the lady off." Just then, a young man or boy by the name of Carl Jones, supposed by Mr. Robertson's son to be a railroad official, though he was not, took up the child in his arms, ran along by the car, which was moving all the time with increasing rapidity, and attempted, without success, to return the child to its mother, who was standing on the platform of the car. Jones ran 75 to 100 feet to the end of the wooden station platform and then stumbled over a baggage truck, which had been used in unloading the baggage from the train, and had been left at the very end of the platform and partly on it, within a few feet of the rails. When Jones stumbled, he lost his hold of the child, who fell under the car and was injured. The train consisted of the engine, followed by a mail car, baggage car, express car, smoking car, day coach, in which the plaintiff had been traveling, chair car, and a sleeper, in the order named. The baggage car therefore was some distance ahead of any passenger car, and the truck was used at the baggage car and left at or near the point where it had been used. Mrs. Calhoun started to leave the car at its south end, nearest the baggage car, and there was therefore between that point and the north end of the baggage car, the length of the express and smoking cars. Jones was not called as a witness by either party. None of the trainmen knew that Jones was attempting to put the plaintiff back on the train until after the injury.
"the company was guilty of negligence in leaving the truck in a dangerous position, and in not having the depot platform properly lighted, and that such condition directly and approximately contributed to the injury."
There was another ground of recovery submitted to the jury, but it was negatived by the findings, and need not be considered further.
It is clear enough, upon this statement of facts, that the railroad did not exercise proper care to afford the plaintiff and his mother a reasonable opportunity to leave the car with safety. The train was late. The attention of the trainmen was fixed upon quick starting, and diverted from the care of the passengers, and the stop at the station was very brief. Taking these circumstances into account, with the failure to inform Mrs. Calhoun that she had arrived at her place of destination, there is no difficulty in concluding that the defendant was negligent. If Mrs. Calhoun and her son, as they were about to step upon the station platform, had been injured by the premature starting of the car, the defendant unquestionably would have been liable. But the injury did not occur in that way. Mrs. Calhoun handed the child to Mr. Robertson to take off the train, and she herself testified that "the child was safely off the train; I saw it in the arms of the gentleman."
The defendant contends that the jury was permitted to find for the plaintiff on account of the negligence which occurred prior to the time he was landed without injury -- namely, the failure to announce the station, to assist the passengers, to light the platform adequately at the point of leaving the train, and the delay insufficient to allow passengers to leave the train with safety. The failure in the performance of the clear duty to afford the passengers a safe place and a reasonable time in which to alight was not, the defendant insists, the proximate cause of the subsequent injury, which was, on the contrary, caused by the foolhardy conduct of Jones in attempting to put back the plaintiff on the train.
children, he is responsible for an injury which occurs as the result of such disturbance. Lane v. Atlantic Works, 111 Mass. 136, and see Lynch v. Nurdin, 1 Q.B. 29; Railroad Company v. Stout, 17 Wall. 657; Union Pacific Railway Co. v. McDonald, 152 U. S. 262. Without pursuing the subject further, it may be said that, among the many cases in which the subject of proximate cause has been discussed, are the following: Milwaukee &c. Railway Co. v. Kellogg, 94 U. S. 469, 94 U. S. 475; Scheffer v. Railroad Co., 105 U. S. 249; Cole v. German Savings & Loan Soc., 124 F. 113; Stone v. Boston & Albany Railroad, 171 Mass. 536.
"It is admitted that the plaintiff was safely taken from the train in question, and committed to the care of a young man on the depot platform; therefore, even though you find that the station at Edmond was not called, that fact can only be considered by you for the purpose of explaining the respective positions of mother and child at that time; and, if the plaintiff recover, it must be by reason of events and conditions subsequent to the time he was taken from the train."
The defendant, it is true, claims that it suffered harm because the conflicting evidence with regard to the original negligence was submitted to the jury and tended to divert their minds from the real issue. But we think the judge did about as well as he could to make the issue plain to the jury, in view of the fact that he was tied down to written instructions, and thereby prevented from giving the jury the aid that is demanded from the bench for the most successful working of the jury system.
the defendant, we come to the real issue, which was submitted to the jury, upon which alone its verdict can stand. Was the company guilty of negligence in leaving the truck in a dangerous position and not having the depot platform properly lighted, and did that condition directly and proximately cause the injury?
"if men went about to guard themselves against every risk to themselves or others which might, by ingenious conjecture, be conceived as possible, human affairs could not be carried on at all. The reasonable man, then, to whose ideal behavior we are to look as the standard of duty, will neither neglect what he can forecast as probable nor waste his anxiety on events that are barely possible. He will order his precaution by the measure of what appears likely in the known course of things."
Pollock, Torts, 8th ed. 41.

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