Baltimore & Ohio Railroad v. Breinig ex rel.Bitter

Bartol, J., delivered the opinion of this Court. New cases have caused greater embarrassment to the Courts than those involving questions of negligence on the part of railroad companies, and their agents, in the management and conduct of their engines and trains. This grows, in a great measure, out of the nature of the question itself. Being generally a mixed question of law and fact, it is not very easy, at all times, to defino the limit that separates the jurisdiction of the Court from that of the jury.

While in the jurisprudence, both of England and this country, the general rule is established that the question of negligence is one for the jury to decide ; yet, as negligence consists in the failure or omission to perform some duty- ³⁸⁶ which, the law imposes, it is within the province of the Court to declare what that duty requires, or to lay down the rules of law applicable to the particular case, so that the jury may have some certain guide in forming their verdict. In the discharge of this duty the Courts have often attempted, by some general definition, to fix the standard or degree of diligence imposed by the law in particular cases; this, from the nature of the subject, and from the varied and complicated character of cases, as well as from the ambiguity and imper-. fection of our language, it is not possible to accomplish; and the attempt to prescribe such a standard has often produced difficulty and confusion instead of tending to establish plain and intelligible rules so as to aid the jury in their investigations, and restrain them within just and proper limits. It is a very obvious principle of law, as well as of justice and common sense, that every one, in the prosecution of his business, is bound to exercise that degree of skill, prudence and care, to avoid inflicting injury upon others, proportioned to the danger. "When applied to railroad companies employing machinery propelled by the dangerous and powerful agency of steam, moving bodies of immense weight and bulk, often with great velocity, necessarily exposing to danger the lives and limbs, not only of passengers in the train, but of others whose occupations require them to go upon or to cross the railway, this principle imposes on the company the legal obligation to observe a higher degree of skill and care than would be exacted in the management of the ancient, more simple and less dangerous modes of conveyance.

And this again must be varied by other circumstances, such as the place where the train is moved, and the degree of risk and danger of injury to others. This Court has had before it recently several cases in which it was necessary to express our judgment upon the degree or measure of diligence required by the law in such cases. In the case of the Baltimore & Ohio Rail Road Co. vs. ³⁸⁷ Worthington, 21 Md. Rep., 275 , where a passenger sued to recover damages resulting from an accident to the train in which he was riding, it was held, that in order to exempt the defendant from liability it was bound “to exercise the utmost care and diligence which human prudence and foresight could employP Or in other words, the legal duty growing out of the undertaking of the defendant, as a carrier of passengers, imposed on it the highest degree of diligence and care, and for a failure or omission to perform this duty, in any particular, the defendant was responsible. At the last term, the cases of The State, use of Coughlan, and Patrick Bannon, by his next friend, vs. The Balto. & Ohio R. R. Co., came before us for decision; those W'ere cases like this, where injury had been inflicted by a railroad train, not upon passengers in the cars, but persons in no way connected