Rock Creek Steamboat Co. v. Boyd

Schmucker, J., delivered the ojbnion of the Court. The appellee sued the appellant Steamboat Company in the Superior Court of Baltimore City for damages alleged to have been caused by its negligence in failing to stop its boat for him at one of its landings. The declaration alleges in substance that the Steamboat Company, having sold to the appellee a round trip ticket by its line from Baltimore to Rock Creek and return, carried him by one of its boats to Rock Creek, but the boat failed to stop there for him on its return trip although he was waiting, on the wharf at that place, when it passed by without stopping, and that in addition thereto he gave the officers of the boat notice from the wharf that he was there waiting to be taken back to Baltimore. The defendant pleaded that it did not commit the wrong alleged and the plaintiff joined issue on the plea.

On the trial of the case the plaintiff secured a judgment in his favor from which the Steamboat Company took this appeal. There is evidence in the record tending to show that the appellant company owns a steamboat called the “Petrel” which makes two round trips a day from Baltimore to Rock Creek in Anne Arundel County, stopping at any one of about a dozen private wharfs in the creek when requested or signalled to do so, but not otherwise. On Saturday December 14th, 1907, the appellee purchased a round trip ticket by the boat for Cray’s wharf, one of the private landings on the creek. He went to Cray’s by the afternoon boat intending to return that night but the boat failed to stop for him when it passed the wharf on the return trip, at about six o’clock in the evening.

The evidence in conflicting as to his having requested or signalled the boat to stop for him, but that was a question for the jury. ¹⁹² There was a slight cover of snow on the ground at the time and it was raining. Several persons living near the wharf offered the' appellee lodging for the night after the boat failed to stop for him, but he declined the offers. Having procured someone to row him across the creek to Osborne’s wharf, he walked nearly eleven miles through the snow and rain until he reached the Curtis Bay trolley line by which he returned to Baltimore, arriving at his home about eleven o’clock at night exhausted by fatigue and drenched with rain. He was quite ill the next day and although he returned to his employment, of barkeeper at a rathskeller, on the following Monday he continued to be ill, and on December 27th was obliged to give up his employment and remained in ill health during the remainder of the winter and the greater part of the next summer, first with grippe and afterwards a “stomach trouble of some sort.” The time lost from his employment, attributed by him to the exposure on his walk home from Gray’s wharf consisted of ten days when he went home on December 27th, 1907, and about six weeks during the following summer and two weeks in the fall of 1908.

His salary was fifteen dollars a week. During the period referred to he, from time to time, either called to see or was visited by Dr. Muse who saw him in all about thirty or forty times during 1907 and 1908, and expressed the opinion that his sickness was due to exposure and cold. He was also treated from about the middle of November, 1908, by Dr. W. A. Oox who found him suffering from intestinal trouble for which he was still treating him at the time of the trial. Dr. Oox expressed no opinion as to the probable cause of the plaintiff’s illness.

There is no evidence of the payment of any money by the plaintiff to his physicians for their services or of other expenses resulting from his illness. The record contains three bills of exceptions, two to the rulings on evidence and one to the Court’s action on the prayers. As the appellant’s counsel stated at the hearing before us that he did not press the first exception, it will receive no further notice from us. ¹⁹³ The second exception was taken to the admission in evidence, over the defendant’s objection of a blank form of the printed bill of lading usually issued by the Steamboat Company for freight received by it for transportation. At the head of the bill was a list of the Bock Creek landings, among which was “Cooks” which was admitted to be Gray’s wharf.

The form was offered in evidence by the plaintiff upon the cross-examination of the manager of the Steamboat Company who had gone upon the stand in its behalf. As it did not relate to the matters in reference to which the witness had testified in his direct examination it was not properly admissible upon his cross-examination. Duterra v. Babylon, 83 Md. 538 ; Griffith v. Diffenderfer, 50 Md. 478 . It would have been admissible for the plaintiff as part of his own evidence, accompanied by proof of its publication in some manner by the company, in order to show what were its stations on Bock Creek.

We do not however regard the admission of this evidence as reversible error because it was conceded in the argument that the Petrel on its afternoon return trip stopped at Gray’s wharf upon notice or signal and not otherwise. At the close of the evidence, on the trial of the case the plaintiff offered no prayers, but the defendant offered seven. The learned Judge below refused