Central Railway Co. v. Coleman

Briscoe, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This was an action brought by the appellee against the appellant for personal injuries alleged to have been sustained by her while crossing Caroline street, in the city of Baltimore. The verdict was for the plaintiff, and the' defendant has appealed. At the trial there was a special exception reserved to the ³³⁵ granting of the first, second, third and fifth prayers of the plaintiff, for the want of sufficient evidence to sustain them.

This exception is not signed by the Judge, and not being properly before us, the questions raised by the facts cannot be considered by us. In the case of Nat. Bank of Chester Co. v. Armstrong, 66 Md. 119 , we said: “ But we do not decide what would have been our determination of this question, if the facts set out in this certificate were properly before us, because we are all clearly of opinion that we cannot consider them. This Court is strictly an appellate tribunal, and on an appeal in a civil suit like this, the facts of the case and what occurred at the trial can be legitimately certified to us only through the medium of bills of exceptions taken to the rulings of the inferior Court, regularly signed by the Judge; and our duty is confined to a review of these rulings.

On such an appeal, what is outside of the exceptions is outside of the record. There is no statutory or other legal authority for the certification of facts to this Court in such a case b'y means of a certificate like this. In every such case the judgment must stand or fall, according as the rulings excepted to are decided to be correct or erroneous, unless it appears that the party appealing has suffered no injury by an erroneous ruling against him, and this must appear solely from the verdict and the rulings and facts embodied in the exceptions.” The defendant’s second and third prayers were granted in connection with the plaintiff’s fifth prayer, but its first prayer was rejected, which asked the Court to instruct the jury that there is no evidence in the cause legally sufficient to entitle the plaintiff to recover, and their verdict must be for the defendant. And the sole question here is, was the evidence adduced legally sufficient to show that the plaintiff was injured by the negligence of the defendant or that of its agents.

It is the settled law of this State, as well as in England, that the legal sufficiency of evidence is a question of law for the Court. The onus of proving that the injury was caused by the negligence of the company, is on the ³³⁶ plaintiff, and if there be no evidence legally sufficient for that purpose, there can be no recovery. The evidence here shows that the plaintiff was an old woman seventy-seven years of age and very deaf — so deaf that she could not hear the bells rung upon the cars in the streets adjoining the Court House, although her attention was called to them. She heard the counsel in the case with difficulty.

She testified that on the afternoon of March 28th, 1893,