Court Opinion

ID: 9694471
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:43:00.914822+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:01.864423
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mír. Justice Musmanno:
The case of Bradley v. L. S. & M. S. Rwy. Co., 238 Pa. 315, referred to in the Majority Opinion, was decided in 1913, and for many decades lay across the *143track of remedial justice like a steel and concrete barrier. No one can estimate the number of lawsuits that were either dismissed or never even begun because of the apparently insurmountable obstacle built up by that decision. The facts in the Bradley case were simple. While waiting at the station of the defendant railroad company in Polk, Pennsylvania for a railroad train bound for Franklin, Pennsylvania, George Bradley, Jr., was violently struck and badly injured by a brake bar (measuring from 2 to 3 feet in length) which broke loose from a passing freight train.
If the doctrine of exclusive control, which came into existence, as the Majority Opinion well points out, a century ago, could ever have proper application, it should have applied in that case. This Court, however, speaking through Justice Potter said that the plaintiff was not entitled to recover because he was the victim of an “'accident pure and simple.” What is any negligence case but the result of an accident pure and simple? Unless wantonness is involved, it is assumed that the basis of all negligence cases is fortuitous circumstance or accident. Nonetheless, this sophistical argument was sustained by the highest court of the Commonwealth and was accepted as precedent for decades.
It was becoming apparent in recent years that the Bradley barrier could not hold up much longer before the driving force of modern decisions with their realistic application of the exclusive control doctrine to present day conditions, as well as to improved transportational facilities and methods for detecting mechanical disrepair. It had in fact become obvious that the Bradley case, doing service for 40 years, was due for formal retirement without pension, but no decision bravely came forward and said so. And, as a consequence, the bar of the Commonwealth could only as*144sume that accidents such as the one involved in the present case were still to be regarded as accidents “pure and simple”. Indeed, counsel for the railroad company asked in the instant appeal that this Court “reaffirm the fair and reasonable rule set forth in the Bradley” case. No lawyer can be criticized for assuming that the standard for fairness and reasonableness is what the Supreme Court says is fair and reasonable.
It is, therefore, a matter for infinite gratification that the Pennsylvania Superior Court boldly confronted the Bradley case, sagaciously analyzed it and courageously declared it to be contrary to the law of the day. And it is a matter for double gratification that this Court has now officially overruled and repudiated the Bradley decision so that the Bar, as well as the people, may definitively know that it is no longer the law of this honored Commonwealth.