Philadelphia, Baltimore & Washington Railroad v. McGugan

Briscoe, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. ' The plaintiff brought a suit in the Circuit Court for Kent County, and recovered a judgment against the defendant for personal injuries received whilst a passenger on the defendant’s railroad, from Elkton, Cecil County, to Massey’s, Kent County, Md. The declaration states that the plaintiff, at the time of the injuries, was a tenant farmer and earning his living by that occupation; that the defendant was a corporation and common carrier of passengers and freight by railroad from Newark, in the State of Delaware, to Massey, in Kent County, Md., through Townsend, in the State of Delaware; that on the 15th day of December, in the year nineteen hundred and four, the plaintiff bought a ticket of the defendant entitling him with his baggage to a safe passage on the railroad from Newark, Del., to Massey’s, Md.; that on the' 17th day of December, 1904, while he wqs travelling on said ticket, using due care and caution in crossing the property of the defendant, in. order to make the necessary changes as required by his ticket, at' or near the village of Townsend, was injured and made permanently lame by reason of the defendant negligently suffering its property to be out of repair over which the plaintiff had the right to pass. ²⁷² At the trial the verdict and judgment were in favor of the •plaintiff, and the defendant has appealed. There is but one bill of exceptions set out in the record, and that presents the correctness of the action of the Court in granting the plaintiff's prayers, and in the rejection of the defendant’s first and second prayers. To the action'of the Court in rejecting the plaintiff’s fifth prayer and to the granting of the defendant’s third to the eighth prayer inclusive, no exception appears to have been taken and it will not be considered by us. The single question m the case is whether the trial Court erred in its rulings on the prayers, that is, in granting the plaintiff’s prayers and in rejecting the defendant’s first and second prayers.

The plaintiff’s prayers were properly granted. They are copies of prayers approved by this Court in P., W. & B. Railroad Company v. Anderson, 72 Md. 519 . In P., B. & W. R. Co. v. Hand, 101 Md. 233 , it is said that similar prayers “were free from objection, and it was unnecessary to discuss them again.” The defendant’s first and second prayers are the usual ones submitted on behalf of the defendant in damage suits, and were to the effect that there was no evidence in the case legally sufficient to entitle the plaintiff to recover, and the evidence was not legally sufficient to show 'that the injury was caused solely by the negligence of the defendant. These prayers being in the nature of a demurrer to the evidence, it becomes necessary for us to briefly consider the material evidence as set out in the record.

The defendant is a corporation and operates and controls a railroad from Newark; Delaware, to Massey, in Kent County, Maryland. The plaintiff was a passenger of the defendant railroad at the time of the alleged injuries and had purchased a round trip ticket for passage over the road from Massey to Elkton. It was necessary for him to change cars at Townsend, Del, and take the train at that place to Massey, on his return trip home. ²⁷³ On the 17th of December, 1904, while travelling from Elk-ton to Massey, and at Townsend, Del., he left the rear end of the rear car, upon which he was riding, and proceeded to take the train to Massey, his point of destination. While proceeding to his train, on the Queen Anne and Kent Railroad, which was about 98 feet from the rear of the car he had left, he fell into an uncovered drain box, or open culvert, filled with' snow on the defendant’s premises, and was injured.

The place where the accident occurred was