Lambert v. Philadelphia, Baltimore & Washington Railroad

Patttson, J., delivered tbe opinion of the Court. The appeal in this ease is from a judgment for the defendants in a suit brought against them by the appellant to recover for personal injuries sustained by him in attempting to board one of their trains, caused, as the plaintiff alleges, by the negligence of the defendants. The suit was originally brought against Tbe Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington Railroad Company, but the declaration was amended by adding the Pennsylvania Railroad Company as a party defendant thereto’. The plaintiff, Edward Lambert, was, at the time of the accident, on the 17th day of January, 1921, and for more than twenty years prior thereto’, a postal clerk in the service of the United States Government, upon the run from Easton, Maryland, to Clayton, Delaware, on the road operated by the defendants, or one of them.

The train, in connection with which the accident occurred, left Oxford, Maryland, on the day of the accident and had proceeded northward as far as Easton, but before pulling in at the station at the latter place, where the mail was received and delivered, the train, as was its usual custom, first proceeded to the water tank, which was to the south of the station, to supply the engine with water. In doing so the cars, including the mail ear, were not detached from the engine. It appears from tbe record that the engine in approaching the water tank went about four feet beyond the point where it should have stopped; that is to say, when the engine stopped the opening in the water tank of the tender attached to the locomotive was about that distance beyond the reach of the spout of the stationary tank through which the water was to be supplied. This necessitated a backward movement of the engine for the distance stated, in order to place the engine in a position to receive the water from the tank, and before or while this was being done the plaintiff attempted to board the mail car through a door on the side of the car. ⁶⁶⁴ At the point where the oar was then located there was, as described in the evidence, a ditch beside the track, and from that ditch, at the point where the plaintiff attempted to board the train, to the sill of the oar door above, was a distance of about six feet and a half.

To aid one in boarding the car from -a, station platform there had been placed on the side of the car two iron rungs. The first of these was about four feet above the ditch, and the other sixteen inches above it, and a like distance below the sill of the car door. The plaintiff in his testimony stated that since the erection of the water tank, which, as he said, was seventeen years before the time he testified in -this case, he, with the knowledge of those operating the trains, had been entering the mail car through the door mentioned while it was at the place where he attempted to enter on the day of the accident. On that occasion he said, “I went to the station and unlocked the box that is there and proceeded down the track so as to be opposite the place where the car stops” when the engine is taking in water at the tank. “When the train came in I attempted to get aboard the car and opened the door.

I have always gotten aboard at that spot. When the train came to a standstill' I attempted to get aboard of the car by getting up on the rungs and opening the door. I got upon the rung and I opened the door * * * I got up and opened the door and had my right foot on the sill of the door and was reaching for the doorknob. As I did that there was a sudden jerk of the car and I went backward in the low place, * * * a ditch.” The movement of the train, which, as he says, caused him to fall, resulting in the injury complained of, was a “backward jerk.” The effect of his evidence was that at 'the times he boarded the trains .at the place mentioned by him the engine would be standing at the tank taking in water.

It was then, while the engine was there, not 'in motion, that he availed himself of the opportunity to board the train or enter his car, which, as he says, was done with the knowledge of -those operating the train. In his testimony he explained how the water was ⁶⁶⁵ conveyed from