Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway Co. v. Moon

Pattison, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an appeal from a judgment rendered in favor of the appellee against the appellant for injuries alleged to have been sustained by her in falling a distance of ten or more feet through a doorway into the hold of the steamer of the defendant, she alleging in the narr. that “her injuries (thus sustained) were the direct result of the negligence of the defendant, its agents and servants, in not properly guarding, protecting, lighting or warning the plaintiff of said dangerous doorway.” Eleven exceptions were taken to the ruling of the Court on the admissibility of evidence, and the twelfth embraces the ruling on the prayers. The Court granted the four prayers offered by the plaintiff and the second and fourth prayers of the defendant, but rejected the other prayers of the defendant. The defendant excepted to the granting of the plaintiff’s prayers and to the rejection of its first, third, fifth, sixth and seventh prayers. ³⁸³ We will first consider the ruling of the Court upon the prayers.

In the first prayer of the defendant, which was refused by the Court, it was asked to instruct the jury that there was no legally sufficient evidence under the pleadings 1o entitle the plaintiff to recover, and it is in the discussion of this ruling of the Court that the defendant has devoted much of his brief. Thus it will be necessary for us to review the evidence in determining whether or not the learned Court below acted properly in refusing this prayer. By the evidence offered by the plaintiff, she on the fifth day of August, 1911, after purchasing from the defendant company a round-trip ticket from Baltimore to Claiborne, took passage with her husband and several relatives and friends on the defendant’s steamer “Cambridge,” which left Baltimore at about three o’clock P. \L on that day. About four o’clock in the afternoon while the party, including the plaintiff, was upon the hurricane deck of the steamer, a storm arose and they were driven by the rain to' seek shelter in the enclosed parts of the steamer.

They first went to the saloon deck, the deck immediately below the hurricane deck; but, finding the saloon packed with people and no room for them, they attempted to reach the next deck below, which is the first deck of the steamer, known as the main or freight deck, by way of the after stairway, which emptied into what is known as the Social Hall, but their way was blocked by the crowd, and thus they went to the deck below by way of the forward stairway. Bpon reaching this lower deck they proceeded aft, on the port side of the boat, to the Social Hall, (»nt (-red and found it much crowded. This Social Hall is immediately forward of the dining saloon and for a distance of about five feet forward therefrom it extends across the entire width of the boat, but from that point forward as far as it extends, about eleven feet, it is divided by the enclosed after stairway, about eight and one-half feet in width, that leads to the saloon above. The distance on each side of the stairway to the side of the boat is about twelve feet.

On the starboard side, next to the stair ³⁸⁴ way, is the purser’s office, consuming about four and one-half feet of such space; the balance of it is in the Social Hall. On the port side of the stairway the whole space of about twelve feet is in the Social Hall. On each side of the boat in the said hall is a gangway, six feet four inches in width, the height not given, and two windows, two feet wide and two feet six inches high. There are also windows in the partition between the dining saloon and this hall, and two doors with glass in the upper panels, one on each side of the boat, leading out of this hall on the quarter deck.

At the time of the accident the gangway was closed to shut out the rain and therefore admitted no light. The dining saloon is lighted with a number of windows; these windows have blinds “that go up- and down.” There is no proof as to the position of these blinds or any of them — - that is, whether they were up or down or partially closed. We mention this fact because the amount of light admitted through the windows in the partition separating the dining saloon from the Social Hall was dependent upon the extent of the light in the dining saloon. Samuel McBride, who at the time of the accident was seated in the Social Hall five or six feet from the door where the plaintiff entered, and not more than ten feet from the doorway through which she fell, testified that there was just about-as many people in that part of the boat at that particu- ' lar time (meaning the time of the accident) as could get there.

That it was raining very hard; it was a dark, stormy afternoon; that the only light to be had was what came through the window leading from the open space in front of the stairway to the dining room, and, as he recalled, there was an opening in the side of the boat back of where he was seated. “There is a gangway that is used h> go off and come on the boat, but that was closed.” Other witnesses testified as to the same darkened condition of the hall. One of them was Albert Boden, who stated that “'it was pretty dark in the Social Hall; it was as dark out ³⁸⁵ of doors as it could be; the storm caused it to be dark, and there were no artificial lights in the Social Hall.” That he did not see any openings at all; they were all closed in, so far as he knew. The doorway through which the plaintiff fell is located on the port side of the enclosed stairway in the forward end of the partition separating it from the Social Hall. Erom it a stairway of ten or twelve steps leads in the hold of the steamer.

The plaintiff, as we have said, reached the main or freight deck from the saloon above by way of the forward stairway. She, accompanied by her friends, or at least some of them, proceeded aft on the port side of the steamer, and upon reaching the Social Hall entered through a door in a partition separating said hall from the forward part of the boat. This door is located at a distance of not more than five feet from the doorway through which the plaintiff fell. She found the hall crowded with persons, and many satchels and suit cases were in the hall.

After entering she momentarily stopped at or near the door where she had entered, and in this position the doorway that we have mentioned, through which she afterwards fell, was immediately to her left and only a few feet from her. In her evidence she says “It was awfully crowded, and as I have said before, it was awfully dark, as they had the side of the boat down, and these men with this freezer hollored ‘heads up’ and the crowd pushed and as they pushed they turned me and as I was turning they were pushing me with such force that I took the opening (the open doorway) to be a passageway and in turning I stepped in there, and oh, my, I went all the way down.” The men with the freezer, as she spoke of it, were those employed by the company who were taking this freezer from the forward part of the boat through the Social Hall out upon the quarter-deck to serve its contents through the window of the dining saloon to the passengers who were then at dinner. The vessel containing the ice-cream, called in the evidence the container, when pushed through the crowd, caused the persons on each side to press back against those ³⁸⁶ behind them. The position of the plaintiff was between them and the open stairway, and she says, “I stepped in there because they were pushing me and in pushing me, as I said before, they turned me and they kept pushing and I saw this and I stepped right in, thinking it was a passage way to the other side of the boat.

That is the whole thing of it, they kept pushing me and there was nothing else to do.” That when she fell she was unconscious for a time. After the fall she was taken up-stairs and after a short wait was put in one of the rooms of the boat. She testified that her knee was hurt, she could not kneel at all; her limbs and back were bruised, and that she still suffers with her back. “That she was in bed over a week constantly after the accident, and then she would sit up and lie down again for two or three weeks; that it was six weeks before she was able to get around much at all, and that she still suffers with her back and her nerves and sleeps very bad. That before the accident she slept very nicely, and had no trouble at all; that now sometimes she does not sleep may be; well, she will doze off, wake up and doze off again, and if it were counted up it would not be two or three hours in a night that she sleeps.” That before the accident she did all her household work; that now she has to have someone to help her.

She was then asked if she had any nervous trouble before this accident, to which she replied, “Last May I lost my appetite and I was a little run down, and Mr. Moon called the doctor in.” “That at the time she took the trip down the Bay she was getting along fine. They thought it would benefit her to take the trip, she was improving so they thought the air would benefit her.” She admitted that Dr. Henning was treating her for nervous trouble at the time of the accident, but said “they were not in a bad way, that she was much improved.” She stated she had been lame for a long time, all her life, but it had nothing to do with the accident, that it did not affect her locomotion or walking. Upon cross-examination, she was asked, “You were being pushed and you took it to be a passage ³⁸⁷ way and you stepped in there?” To which she replied, “I did not have anything else to do, because they were pushing me, and if I had not stepped in there I would have gone down anyhow.” The witness McBride testified that he was seated with three or four others in chairs in the position explained above, and when the men came through the crowd with the ice-cream freezer, they ran into one of those gentlemen and knocked him out of the chair, and the people generally were pushed in every direction to make room for the large ice-cream freezer that was practically the size of a flour barrel, with three men attached to it. That the crowd divided and made a passage way for these men with the ice-cream freezer to pass through, and it was at this time that he heard the noise and heard the scream.

That immediately after the accident he examined the doorway through which the plaintiff had fallen, and found the door hooked hack; that the door opened from the right-hand side and hooked hack against the partition; that it was about two feet in width and fastened back with a hook, and from general observation, the door, when fastened back, appeared to be the same color as the partition. On this point another witness testified that the door, when fastened back, was the same color as the partition, an oak color. The testimony disclosed that a stairway runs down from this doorway, which partially turned at a point several steps from the bottom, the distance down being ten or twelve steps. That inside of the doorwoy it was dark, no light at all.

So far as is disclosed by the evidence, the only way of lighting this stairway, without the use of artificial light, was by means of a small window, opposite the doorway, in the partition separating the purser’s office from the enclosed stairway, and the evidence discloses that there was no artificial light in the purser’s office. This stairway led into an apartment that was used as a dining-room for the officers, and at the time one or more of them were eating their dinner, which was brought to them by a waiter from the pantry in ³⁸⁸ the rear of the dining saloon. In carrying it to them, the waiter went from the pantry to the qnarter-deck, then from the qnarter-deck through the Social Hall, through this doorway