Pennsylvania Railroad v. Lord

Pakke, L, filed a dissenting opinion as follows, in which Sloax, J., concurred. The burden of proof was upon the plaintiff to show by legally sufficient testimony that the defendant corporation was responsible for the injury she had sustained. This indispensable testimony is not supplied by conjecture or speculation nor by inferences which are not warranted by the facts. The truck by which the injury was inflicted was leased by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company to the Baltimore & Eastern Railroad Company as the successor corporation by purchase to the Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway Company.

The legal effect of the lease was to transfer for a prescribed period of time tbe possession and control of tbe property to- the lessee to- the exclusion of the lessor’s possession and control. At the time of the wrongs alleged the truck was driven by a servant of the Baltimore & Eastern Railroad Company, a public service corporation, in the- course of tbe operation of the latter as a public carrier over1 its authorized motor truck route upon a public roadway. There is no- test-i ⁵³⁸ mony of evidential value that the driver of the truck was in the employ of the defendant corporation, or was subject to its control or was engaged in its business. Nor is there any legally sufficient evidence from which the jury could infer that the defendant carrier either was one of a trinity of principals composed of the three corporations mentioned, or was the principal to