Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/116/366/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 00:50:28+00:00

Document:
A person who hires a public hack and gives the driver directions as to the place to which he wishes to be conveyed, but exercises no other control over the conduct of the driver, is not responsible for his acts or negligence, or prevented from recovering against a railroad company for injuries suffered from a collision of its train with the hack, caused by the negligence of both the managers of the train and of the driver.
Thorogood v. Bryan, 8 C.B. 115, disapproved.
damages for the injury. The railroad was at the time operated by a receiver of the company appointed by order of the Court of Chancery of New Jersey. In consequence of his death, the defendant was appointed by the court his successor, and subjected to his liabilities, and this action is prosecuted by its permission.
imputed negligence of the plaintiff, assuming that the driver was negligent, the court instructed them that unless the plaintiff interfered with the driver, and controlled the manner of his driving, his negligence could not be imputed to the plaintiff.
"that where a person hires a public hack or carriage, which at the time is in the care of the driver, for the purpose of temporary conveyance, and gives directions to the driver as to the place or places to which he desires to be conveyed, and gives no special directions as to his mode or manner of driving, he is not responsible for the acts or negligence of the driver, and if he sustains an injury by means of a collision between his carriage and another, he may recover damages from any party by whose fault or negligence the injury occurred, whether that of the driver of the carriage in which he is riding or of the driver of the other. He may sue either. The negligence of the driver of the carriage in which he is riding will not prevent him from recovering damages against the other driver, if he was negligent at the same time. . . . The passenger in the carriage may direct the driver where to go to such a park or to such a place that he wishes to see. So far the driver is under his direction; but my charge to you is that as to the manner of driving, the driver of the carriage or the owner of the hack -- in other words, he who has charge of it, and has charge of the team -- is the person responsible for the manner of driving, and the passenger is not responsible for that unless he interferes and controls the matter by his own commands or requirements. If the passenger requires the driver to drive with great speed through a crowded street, and an injury should occur to foot passengers or to anybody else, why then he might be liable, because it was by his own command and direction that it was done; but ordinarily in a public hack, the passengers do not control the driver, and therefore I hold that unless you believe Mr. Hackett exercised control over the driver in this case, he is not liable for what the driver did. If you believe he did exercise control, and required the driver to cross at this particular time, then he would be liable because of his interference. "
The plaintiff recovered judgment, and this instruction is alleged as error for which its reversal is sought.
That one cannot recover damages for an injury to the commission of which he has directly contributed is a rule of established law and a principle of common justice. And it matters not whether that contribution consists in his participation in the direct cause of the injury or in his omission of duties which, if performed, would have prevented it. If his fault, whether of omission or commission, has been the proximate cause of the injury, he is without remedy against one also in the wrong. It would seem that the converse of this doctrine should be accepted as sound -- that when one has been injured by the wrongful act of another to which he has in no respect contributed, he should be entitled to compensation in damages from the wrongdoer. And such is the generally received doctrine unless a contributory cause of the injury has been the negligence or fault of some person toward whom he sustains the relation of superior or master, in which case the negligence is imputed to him, though he may not have personally participated in or had knowledge of it, and he must bear the consequences. The doctrine may also be subject to other exceptions growing out of the relation of parent and child or guardian and ward, and the like. Such a relation involves considerations which have no bearing upon the question before us.
To determine, therefore, the correctness of the instruction of the court below -- to the effect that if the plaintiff did not exercise control over the conduct of the driver at the time of the accident, he is not responsible for the driver's negligence, nor precluded thereby from recovering in the action -- we have only to consider whether the relation of master and servant existed between them. Plainly that relation did not exist. The driver was the servant of his employer, the livery stable keeper, who hired out him, with horse and carriage, and was responsible for his acts. Upon this point we have a decision of the Court of Exchequer in Quarman v. Burnett, 6 M. & W.
"It is undoubtedly true that there may be special circumstances which may render the hirer of job horses and servants responsible for the negligence of the servant, though not liable by virtue of the general relation of master and servant. He may become so by his own conduct, as by taking the actual management of the horses or ordering the servant to drive in a particular manner which occasions the damage complained of, or to absent himself at any particular moment, and the like."
As none of these circumstances existed, it was held that the defendants were not liable, because the relation of master and servant between them and the driver did not exist.
This doctrine was approved and applied by the Queen's Bench division in the recent case of Jones v. Corporation of Liverpool, 14 Q.B.D. 890. The corporation owned a water cart, and contracted with a Mrs. Dean for a horse and driver, that it might be used in watering the streets. The horse belonged to her, and the driver she employed was not under the control of the corporation otherwise than its inspector directed him what streets or portions of streets to water. Such directions he was required to obey under the contract with Mrs. Dean for his employment. The carriage of the plaintiff was injured by the negligent driving of the cart, and, in an action against the corporation for the injury, he recovered a verdict, which was set aside upon the ground that the driver was the servant of Mrs. Dean, who had hired both him and the horse to the corporation.
In this country there are many decisions of courts of the highest character to the same effect, to some of which we shall presently refer.
"the passenger is so far identified with the carriage in which he is traveling that want of care on the part of the driver will be a defense of the driver of the carriage which directly caused the injury."
"If the driver of the omnibus the deceased was in had, by his negligence or want of due care and skill, contributed to any injury from a collision, his master clearly could maintain no action, and I must confess see no reason why a passenger, who employs the driver to carry him, stands in any different position."
Mr. Justice Williams added that he was of the same opinion. He said: "I think the passenger must, for this purpose, be considered as identified with the person having the management of the omnibus he was conveyed in."
passenger and the owner. In the absence of this relation, the imputation of their negligence to the passenger, where no fault of omission or commission is chargeable to him, is against all legal rules. If their negligence could be imputed to him, it would render him, equally with them, responsible to third parties thereby injured, and would also preclude him from maintaining an action against the owner for injuries received by reason of it. But neither of these conclusions can be maintained. Neither has the support of any adjudged cases entitled to consideration.
The truth is the decision in Thorogood v. Bryan rests upon indefensible ground. The identification of the passenger with the negligent driver or the owner, without his personal cooperation or encouragement, is a gratuitous assumption. There is no such identity. The parties are not in the same position. The owner of a public conveyance is a carrier, and the driver or the person managing it is his servant. Neither of them is the servant of the passenger, and his asserted identity with them is contradicted by the daily experience of the world.
"With due respect to the judges who decided that case, I do not consider that it is necessary for me to dissect the judgment, but I decline to be bound by it, because it is a single case; because I know, upon inquiry, that it has been doubted by high authority; because it appears to me not reconcilable with other principles laid down at common law; and, lastly, because it is directly against Hay v. La Neve and the ordinary practice of the Court of Admiralty."
say that he is not to be affected by it for other purposes. 36 N.J.L. 227-228."
In the latter case, it appeared that the plaintiff had hired a coach and horses, with a driver, to take his family on a particular journey. In the course of the journey, while crossing the track of the railroad, the coach was struck by a passing train, and the plaintiff was injured. In an action brought by him against the railroad company, it was held that the relation of master and servant did not exist between him and the driver, and that the negligence of the latter, cooperating with that of persons in charge of the train, which caused the accident, was not imputable to the plaintiff as contributory negligence to bar his action.
In New York, a similar conclusion has been reached. In Chapman v. New Haven Railroad Co., 19 N.Y. 341, it appeared that there was a collision between the trains of two railroad companies, by which the plaintiff, a passenger in one of them, was injured. The Court of Appeals of that state held that a passenger by railroad was not so identified with the proprietors of the train conveying him, or with their servants, as to be responsible for their negligence, and that he might recover against the proprietors of another train for injuries sustained from a collision through their negligence, although there was such negligence in the management of the train conveying him as would have defeated an action by its owners. In giving the decision, the court referred to Thorogood v. Bryan, and said that it could see no justice in the doctrine in connection with that case, and that to attribute to the passenger the negligence of the agents of the company, and thus bar his right to recover, was not applying any existing exception to the general rule of law, but was framing a new exception based on fiction and inconsistent with justice. The case differed from Thorogood v. Bryan in that the vehicle carrying the plaintiff was a railway train instead of an omnibus, but the doctrine of the English case, if sound, is as applicable to passengers on railway trains as to passengers in an omnibus, and it was so applied, as already stated, by the Court of Exchequer in the recent case of Armstrong v. Lancashire & Yorkshire Railroad Co.
In Dyer v. Erie Railway Co., 71 N.Y. 228, the plaintiff was injured while crossing the defendant's railroad track on a public thoroughfare. He was riding in a wagon by the permission and invitation of the owner of the horses and wagon. At that time, a train standing south of certain buildings, which prevented its being seen, had started to back over the crossing without giving the driver of the wagon any warning of its approach. The horses, becoming frightened by the blowing off of steam from engines in the vicinity, became unmanageable and the plaintiff was thrown or jumped from the wagon, and was injured by the train, which was backing. It was held that no relation of principal and agent arose between the driver of the wagon and the plaintiff, and, although he traveled voluntarily, he was not responsible for the negligence of the driver where he himself was not chargeable with negligence and there was no claim that the driver was not competent to control and manage the horses.
"It seems to us that the negligence of the company, or of its servant, should not be imputed to the passenger where such negligence contributed to his injury jointly with the negligence of a third party, any more than it should be so imputed where the negligence of the company, or its servant, was the sole cause of the injury."
without fault himself, as it would be to hold such passenger responsible for the negligence of his carrier whereby an injury was inflicted upon a stranger. And of the last proposition it is enough to say that it is simply absurd."
In the Supreme Court of Illinois, the same doctrine is maintained. In the recent case of the Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railway Co. v. Shacklet, 105 Ill. 364, the doctrine of Thorogood's case was examined and rejected, the court holding that where a passenger on a railway train is injured by the concurring negligence of servants of the company on whose train he is traveling and of the servants of another company with whom he has not contracted, there being no fault or negligence on his part, he or his personal representatives may maintain an action against either company in default, and will not be restricted to an action against the company on whose train he was traveling.
Similar decisions have been made in the courts of Kentucky, Michigan, and California. Danville &c. Turnpike Co. v. Stewart, 2 Met. (Ky.) 119; Louisville & Cincinnati Railroad Co. v. Case, 9 Bush 728; Cuddy v. Horn, 46 Mich. 596; Tompkins v. Clay Street Railroad Co., 4 P. 1165.
"not only the hirer of the coach but also all the passengers in it would be under a constraint to mount the box and superintend the conduct of the driver in the management and control of his team, or be put for remedy exclusively to an action against the irresponsible driver or equally irresponsible owner of a coach taken, it may be, from a coach stand, for the consequences of an injury which was the product of the cooperating wrongful acts of the driver and of a third person, and that too though the passengers were ignorant of the character of the driver, and of the responsibility of the owner of the team, and strangers to the route over which they were to be carried."

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