State Ex Rel. Charles v. United Railways & Electric Co.

Schmucker, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The equitable appellant sued the appellee in the Court of Common Pleas of Baltimore City for damages for the death of her husband who was fatally injured by falling from one of the appellee’s electric cars. At the trial of the case below the Court granted the defendant’s prayer, offered at the close ¹⁸⁴ of the plaintiff’s evidence, directing the jury to find for-the defendant, for want of legally sufficient evidence to entitle the plaintiff to recover. A verdict and judgment were entered for the defendant and the plaintiff appealed.

There is but one bill of exceptions in the record and that brings up for our review the Court’s action in granting the prayer. The material facts testified to by the plaintiff’s witnesses are as follows: The appellee maintains and operates a single railway' track, with occasional turnout switches, on the long bridge extending from the foot of Light street in Baltimore City to Brooklyn in Anne Arundel County. Shortly before noon on February 15th, 1903, Edward C. Charles, the husband of the equitable plaintiff, boarded one of the defendants north-bound cars at the south end of the bridge and paid his fare. He did not enter the car, although there were only two passengers in it, but remained standing on the rear platform.

The two passengers, of whom one, named Irwin, was a discharged employee of the defendant and the other was a colored man named Hicks, were the only persons who testified to what occurred at the time of the injury to Charles. A motorman named Lambreth, not the one driving the car, also rode in it for a short distance. According to their testimony, a few moments after Charles got upon the rear platform of the car it ran into and through one of the switches. Irwin, one of the passengers, who was inside the car testified that when it entered the switch it was going at a good rate of speed, that he was walking back through the car at the time and just before he got to the door of the car “it plunged right into the switch and went clean into the switch and two car lengths on the other side of it, and as it did it threw me on the other side where Mr. Lambreth was sitting.” ■ , Hicks, the other passenger, who was seated about the middle of the car when it entered the switch, testified that he did not know how fast the car was going at the time but its motion in entering the switch “kind of threw him a little off the seat.” He also testified that the car after passing through ¹⁸⁵ the switch ran about two car lengths until it came to the draw when it stopped.

Irwin’s testimony on that subject was to the same effect. When the car stopped Charles was for the first time seen, by both witnesses, lying unconscious on the floor of the bridge across the straight track- and the switch near' the entrance to the latter. There is no evidence that he ever regained consciousness and it is admitted that he died from a fracture of his skull received at the time of the accident to him on the bridge. Both witnesses saw Charles standing in apparent good health on the rear platform of the car just before it entered the switch, but neither one saw him again until the car stopped after he had been injured, nor was there any evidence at all produced as to the manner or circumstances of the happening of the injury to him.

The motorman of the car as it entered and passed through the switch was at his place on its front platform and the conductor was standing inside of the car near its rear door, which was open, exhibiting a paper to a motorman who rode a short distance on the car. The witness Irwin further testified that he had lived near the bridge all his life and that “there was no occasion for that car to go into that switch.” The evidence shows that a fatal accident occurred to the husband of the equitable plaintiff after he had become a passenger upon the defendant’s car. The sole question in the case is whether there was any legally sufficient evidence tending to show a causal connection between any negligent act of the defendant and the happening of the injury. There is certainly no direct evidence of that character.

Although one of the witnesses thought the car was going at a good rate of speed there is no evidence that it was going at an excessive or improper speed. There was nothing in itself unlawful or negligent in running through the switch instead of continuing on the main track. The statement of the witness Irwin that the car had no occasion to go into the switch