Greeley v. Baltimore Transit Co.

Delaplaine, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Catherine Greeley, plaintiff, is appealing from a judgment entered in favor of the Baltimore Transit Company, defendant, in a suit for damages for injuries sustained in a fall while she was alighting from a street car in Baltimore. The accident occurred on December 26, 1939, when a North Avenue car stopped at Charles Street. The front end of the car was used for both entrance and exit.

The motorman operated a synchronized device to open the doors and lower the step. It was alleged in the amended ¹² declaration that the step was not in proper position for the plaintiff to use. When the doors were opened, Mrs. Greeley was the first to step out. She testified that while she did not look at the doors to see whether they were entirely open, she believed they were open wide enough.

Although she could have seen the step, she did not notice whether it was level. She stated that as she put her right foot on the step it “went down with such a bump” that she fell and injured her right ankle. The appellant complains because the trial court refused to instruct the jury that the injury raised a presumption of negligence on the part of the transit company. Under the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, whenever the plaintiff in a suit for injury caused by negligence has offered legally sufficient evidence to support the inference that the injury resulted from want of care, the defendant is prima facie negligent, if the thing which produced the injury was under the management and control of the defendant, and the occurrence was such as does not happen in the ordinary course of events when due care is exercised.

Frenkil v. Johnson, 175 Md. 592, 604 , 3 A. 2d 479, 484 ; 10 Am. Jur., Carriers, Sec. 1623. Many applications of the doctrine have been made in cases of train collisions and derailments, for such circumstances in themselves create a presumption of negligence. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co. v. State, to use of Mahone, 63 Md. 135, 144 .

Similarly, in Smith v. Blue Ridge Transportation Co., 172 Md. 42 , 191 A. 66 , where a passenger on a bus was tripped by an aisle seat, which had dropped from its folded position, it was held by this Court that a presumption of negligence was raised against the carrier. But the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur is applicable only when the facts and surrounding circumstances tend to show that the injury was the result of some condition or act which ordinarily does not happen if those who have the control or management thereof exercise proper care. It does not apply where it can be said from ordinary expe ¹³ rience that the accident might have happened without the fault of the defendant. Conway v. Boston Elevated R. Co., 255 Mass. 571 , 152 N. E. 94 .

Hence the mere fact that the plaintiff was injured while a passenger on the defendant’s car does not of itself raise any presumption of negligence against the defendant in the absence of surrounding circumstances from which an inference of negligence could properly be drawn. Benedick v. Potts, 88 Md. 52, 55 , 40 A. 1067 , 41 L. R. A. 478; Callis v. United Railways & Electric Co., 128 Md. 406 , 97 A. 715 ; Hilton Quarries v. Hall, 161 Md. 518, 529 , 158 A. 19 ; 10 Am. Jur., Carriers, sec. 1625. Thus, if a passenger’s injury has been acused by the lurch of a car, the case is brought within the doctrine if the lurch was such as would have been unlikely to occur if proper care had been exercised; but the mere fact that the passenger was injured does not of