Northern Central Ry. Co. v. McMahon

Page, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. At the trial of this cause the appellant offered four prayers of which two were granted and two rejected. The only questions arising upon this record are those presented by the rulings of the Court in rejecting the third and fourth. By the third prayér, the Court was asked to instruct the jury that there was no evidence from which they could find that any of the employees of the defendant saw the plaintiff in time to avoid the collision; and by the fourth, that from the uncontradicted evidence in the cause the plaintiff directly contributed by his own negligence to the injuries complained of.

The facts of the case are substantially as follows: The accident happened on the defendant’s road, at the crossing of the Ruxton road, (a public road,) over the tracks of the defendant at Rockland Station. The plaintiff, a young man of twenty-five years of age and familiar with the railroad at that point, started on that morning with a horse and cart from his father’s house to Mr. Fisher’s, at Ruxton. To reach that point his route took him along the Falls road until he reached the Ruxton road, thence along that road about forty or fifty feet to the track. The railroad at the crossing of that road runs nearly north and south, the direction of Baltimore being to the south.

A siding, starting three hundred and ninety-eight feet southerly from the crossing, runs nearly parallel to ⁴⁸⁵ the main track between it and the Falls road. The whistling post is 1200 feet from the crossing. In approaching the track from the Falls road along and over the Ruxton road, at the point of intersection of these two roads, the plaintiff had an unobstructed view southerly along the track for more than 400 feet; as he came nearer to the track his view was intercepted by a freight car that stood upon the siding; after passing that there was a space of twelve feet between the car and the station house, where he could see down the track for about four hundred feet. Then the station house obstructed his vision until he came within nineteen feet of the track, and from that point until he reached the track there was nothing to obstruct his view for a distance of about five hundred feet.

The day was cold and clear, the wind was high and made some noise and his cart “made a racket; ” it had no washers. He walked on the left or near side of his horse but was tall enough to see over it. In giving "his account of the accident, he said that after turning into the Ruxton road he “walked along carefully,” he “took a careful look,” he saw no engine and heard no signal. He controlled his horse by the lines in his hands. “As I drawed close I came almost to a standstill, I did not stop, but held my horse up, and couldn’t see no train approaching, and then urged my horse along.

As I drawed to the track, and my horse had his front feet over the first rail, I seen this train approaching, and there was no stopping, and the only thing to do was to go ahead. I then clucked to my horse and struck him with the line. In the meantime the horse made a sudden jump and cleared his hind-feet and me from the track and by that time the car about struck the cart and demolished it clean up the track.” From this statement, it is clear the train must have reached the crossing in an exceedingly short period of time after the feet of the horse were over the rail, and it had then been in full view of a person within nineteen feet of the track for five hundred feet. If the speed of the train were much more rapid than that testified to by any witness in the case it must also have been within the vision of the plaintiff all the time ⁴⁸⁶ after he had passed the station house until his horse reached the track.

Why’did he not become aware of its approach and