Court Opinion

ID: 9699554
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 20:33:28.23449+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:53.077521
License: Public Domain

MANDERINO, Justice
(concurring and dissenting).
I concur in the majority’s reversal of the order of the Superior Court granting appellee Penn Central Transportation Company and its trustees a new trial, but dissent from that portion of the majority’s opinion affirming the Superior Court’s remand on the issue of liability of the cab company. I do not believe that the trial court’s instructions “imposed liability on the cab company without requiring that the jury first determine whether the cab company was negligent.” Implicit in the trial court’s instructions, and in the jury’s finding of negligence on the part of the railroad, was a finding of negligence on the part of the cab company.
As stated by the majority, the railroad had a “nondelegable duty to use reasonable care to furnish its employees a safe place to work,” while the cab company “owe[d] to its passengers the highest degree of care which is reasonably possible in the circumstances.” Even if we consider the duty imposed on the cab company to be merely one of reasonable conduct under circum*48stances which require an increased amount of care (see footnote 11 to majority opinion), it is clear that the cab company’s duty to appellant is at least as great as that of the railroad. Both the railroad and the cab company had a duty in this case to provide a safe vehicle in which to transport appellant to his work location. The railroad, under the circumstances of this case, could not be held to have breached that duty without a finding (at least implicitly) that the cab company also breached its duty. If the cab company had not breached its duty to appellant, but had provided a safe vehicle in which to transport appellant, then the railroad could not have been found liable for its action of choosing that cab company.
Mr. Justice NIX joins in this concurring and dissenting opinion.