Kaplan v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad

Delaplaine, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This suit was instituted in the Superior Court of Baltimore City by Herbert Kaplan, a resident of Baltimore, against the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company ⁵⁸ to recover for his personal injuries resulting from a fall on the wooden stairway leading down to the Dolphin Street entrance of Mount Royal Station. Plaintiff, a wholesale druggist, age 43, who had been commuting between Baltimore and Washington several days a week, testified that on the morning of March 4, 1953, one of his employees drove him to the railroad station to take the 9 o’clock train to Washington. About ten minutes before 9 o’clock he arrived at the “canopy entrance,” as the Dolphin Street stairway was referred to in the Court below because of the roof over the stairway from the sidewalk down to the entrance.

There is also a railing on each side of the stairway. Plaintiff testified that he had not used this stairway very often, this being the first time he had used it in more than six months. It was a cold and rainy day. The wind had been driving the rain under the roof upon the steps.

There is a landing about half way down the stairway. Plaintiff walked down the first flight of steps to the landing without difficulty, and then started down the second flight. He slipped on the eighth step from the bottom of the stairway. He described his fall as follows: “The heel of my right foot got caught on something that was on the steps, and as I tried to put my left foot down, * * * this substance — this rock salt or these pebbles or whatever was there — just sent * * * both of my feet right out like I was on a pair of roller skates, and then I started to fly through the air.” He fell backwards and rolled down two steps, and sustained some injury to his back.

Plaintiff complained (1) that the wooden treads had been worn down after years of use and as a result the iron bolts that held the treads in place projected above the wood; (2) that the edge of the tread was so worn away that it gave him no support when he put his left foot down; and (3) that rock salt or gravel had caused him to lose his balance. On the contrary, employees of the railroad company testified that there were no bolts projecting above the ⁵⁹ steps; that the steps were not worn down enough to make them dangerous; and that there was no rock salt or gravel on any of the steps. At the conclusion of the testimony, the trial judge directed a verdict in favor of defendant on the ground of lack of legally sufficient evidence of defendant’s negligence. From the judgment entered upon that verdict plaintiff appealed to this Court.

We are confronted at the outset with the question of the degree of care which a common carrier must exercise to provide safe station accommodations. Of course, a common carrier is required to use the utmost degree of care and skill in everything that concerns the safety of passengers. Moreover, the carrier’s duty is not limited to the actual transportation of passengers. The carrier is also required to provide safe means of access to the trains.

Accordingly, after a person has purchased his ticket and is waiting to board a train or is in the act of doing so, he is entitled to receive from the carrier the highest degree of care for his safety consistent with the mode of conveyance and its practical operation. Dilley v. Baltimore Transit Co., 188 Md. 557 , 39 A. 2d 469 , 155 A. L. R. 627. However, the carrier is required to provide only such station facilities as are reasonably necessary for the accommodation of its passengers, actual and prospective. While there are a few cases that hold a carrier to the exercise of the same high degree of care and skill in the maintenance of its stations as is imposed upon it in the operation of its trains, it has been held by the overwhelming weight of authority that a carrier owes a duty to all persons coming to its station, through its express or implied invitation, to exercise ordinary care to keep the station and the approaches thereto in a reasonably safe condition.

Davis v. South Side Elevated Railroad Co., 292 Ill. 378 , 127 N. E. 66 , 10 A. L. R. 254. This generally accepted rule was adopted by this Court in Jackson v. Hines, Director General of Railroads, 137 ⁶⁰ Md. 621, 626, 113 A. 129, 131 . In the opinion in that case Judge Offutt said: “The care which the carrier is required to exercise under such circumstances differs in degree from that which it is bound to exercise in the actual transportation of its passengers, and the obligation for its exercise arises from a different source. For while in the transportation of its passengers, the contract of transportation imposes upon the carrier the duty of exercising ‘the utmost care and diligence which human foresight can use’ to protect the passenger * * *, in the case of an invitee its duty- is to use only ordinary and reasonable care for his protection, and that duty arises by implication as a matter of law.” It certainly cannot be said that a person is a passenger on a railroad before he enters the railroad station.