A charge that a railway is bound to use ordinary care to light
its stations and approaches for the reasonable accommodation of
passengers is not erroneous to the prejudice of the railway
company.
The obligation of a carrier to use due care obtains not only
during carriage of passengers, but while they sustain that relation
and are performing acts fairly attributable thereto.
Such obligation obtains where, as in this case, the passenger
left the car of a train before it had started and after
considerable delay, to ascertain whether it was the right train, no
one apparently being in charge who could give the information.
Such an act on the part of a passenger is not an independent
cause which relieves the carrier as being a new and proximate cause
of the accident.
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Ry. v.
Calhoun, 213 U. S. 1,
distinguished.
183 F. 575 affirmed.
The facts, which involve the liability of a common carrier for
injuries sustained by a passenger, are stated in the opinion.
Page 228 U. S. 359
MR. JUSTICE DAY delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case was begun by Mrs. Dora E. Mayer, since deceased, to
recover damages for injuries alleged to have been sustained by her
because of the negligence of the Texas & Pacific Railway
Company in failing to keep its station grounds at Marshall, Texas,
properly lighted when Mrs. Mayer was about to take passage upon one
of its trains. Judgment upon verdict in the United States Circuit
Court for the Eastern District of Texas, to which the case had been
removed, was affirmed by the United States Circuit Court of Appeals
for the Fifth Circuit. The case is brought here because of the fact
that the railway company was organized as a federal
corporation.
The facts disclosed in the record tend to show that Mrs. Mayer,
a woman about fifty-nine years of age, desired to travel from
Marshall to New Orleans, Louisiana. For that purpose, accompanied
by a young man, a relative, she proceeded to the station in the
former city. The train left late at night. The night was dark and
rainy. The station at Marshall has three railway tracks adjoining
it. The first track, nearest to the depot, was unoccupied. Upon the
second a train was standing, bound for the west,
Page 228 U. S. 360
the opposite direction to which Mrs. Mayer expected to travel.
The train for New Orleans was standing upon the third track, headed
toward the east, consisting of an express car, smoker, chair car,
and sleeper. After purchasing her ticket, Mrs. Mayer and her
companion proceeded toward the eastbound train on the third track,
passing around the train standing nearer the station. On their way,
they met someone with a lantern, and were told to take the train
upon the third track. They entered the smoking car. There was no
one in charge of the car, which was dimly lighted, and the
testimony tends to show that Mrs. Mayer became apprehensive that
she was upon the wrong car, finding after ten or fifteen minutes
that no other person entered the coach. Her escort assured her that
she was upon the right train and left her in the car, going out of
the smoker with a view to ascertaining whether the chair car was
open. Mrs. Mayer testified:
"I became fearful that I was on the wrong coach, as no one else
entered the same, and I left it to find out as to whether it was
the right car or not. . . . I went to the door and saw that it was
all in darkness, and I wanted to go and I held onto the door frame
to try to reach the steps of the car with my feet, and in reaching
for them, I went on too far and slipped and fell to the
ground."
She was severely injured.
There was testimony tending to show that the station was
improperly lighted, and, as upon writ of error the facts tending to
support the judgment must be considered in their most favorable
aspect in that regard, we must give due weight to the testimony
offered to establish that the illumination was so deficient at this
point as to make it very difficult to recognize the countenance of
a person more than ten or twelve feet away, and that, when the
train was on the second track, as in this instance, in the vicinity
where Mrs. Mayer fell, the door and steps of the car were
insufficiently lighted. The court submitted
Page 228 U. S. 361
the question to the jury upon a charge which left to them the
issue of negligence in the failure of the railway company to use
ordinary care to provide sufficient lights. In this respect, the
court told the jury:
"Upon that subject, you are instructed that, after the plaintiff
purchased her ticket and went to the car for the purpose of taking
passage for New Orleans, the relation of passenger existed between
her and the defendant railroad company, and the duty of the
defendant to her was that of exercising ordinary care in having
proper lights for the guidance of those desiring to take passage on
its train, or, if necess
ary [ity] demanded it, to get off
the train. By ordinary care is meant that degree of care and
caution that a man of ordinary prudence and ordinary caution would
exercise under the same or similar circumstances. Therefore, in
this case, determine whether or not the defendant had provided
lights such as a man of ordinary prudence and caution under the
circumstances would have provided. If you find from the evidence
that the railway had provided such lights, you need not pursue your
inquiry further, but return a verdict for the defendant. But if you
find from the evidence that the lights that the defendant had
furnished were not such as a man of ordinary care and ordinary
prudence, under the circumstances, would have furnished, then you
are instructed to determine the further question in regard to Mrs.
Mayer's injuries and how they occurred."
And the court also charged the jury that, if it believed that
Mrs. Mayer thought that she was on the wrong train, and attempted
to get off the train to ascertain that fact definitely before
leaving the station, her relation to the railway company continued
to be that of a passenger.
The court further instructed the jury that, if it found that the
railway company was negligent in the respect mentioned, it should
further determine whether Mrs. Mayer was guilty of contributory
negligence in attempting
Page 228 U. S. 362
to alight from the car under the circumstances shown, and that,
to render a verdict for the plaintiff, the jury must find from the
evidence that the railway company had not used ordinary care in
providing lights, and that the plaintiff, in attempting to descend
from the car, had used ordinary care under the circumstances, and
that her injury was solely due to the want of ordinary care upon
the railway company's part in failing to provide proper lights.
The charge that a railway company is bound to use ordinary care
to light its stations and approaches for the reasonable
accommodation of passengers, so that they or those intended to
become such may enter upon and depart from trains with reasonable
safety, was as favorable as the defendant could ask.
Alabama G.
S. Ry. Co. v. Coggins, 88 F. 455. The obligation to use due
care obtains not only while the passengers are being carried on the
train, but while they sustain the relation of passengers and are
performing acts reasonably and fairly attributable to that
relation, such as leaving the train for refreshment, for the
sending of telegrams, for the taking of exercise, and the like.
Alabama G. S. Ry. Co. v. Coggins, supra, and cases therein
cited.
We see no reason to disagree with the court below in its charge
with reference to contributory negligence. In view of the fact that
no one was in charge of the train, and that nobody came into the
car after Mrs. Mayer had been there some ten or fifteen minutes, it
was not an unusual or improper thing that she, an elderly woman,
under such circumstances, should wish to learn for herself whether
or not she had taken the right train or car for transportation upon
her intended journey.
Nor do we think there is force in the contention that, Mrs.
Mayer being once safely on the train, her own conduct in
undertaking to leave it was the intervention of a new and proximate
cause of the injury, which alone resulted in her misfortune, and of
which she cannot complain,
Page 228 U. S. 363
for this argument, like the other, proceeds upon the assumption
that, she having once safely become a passenger, the railway
company owed her no further duty. As we have said, Mrs. Mayer's
conduct, because of her anxiety and desire to be sure that she was
upon the right train, did not, in our view, of itself absolve the
railway company from its duty to her as a passenger. True it is
that a new cause, sufficient to produce the injury, may, after the
negligence which is the basis of recovery has occurred, intervene
under such circumstances as to relieve from liability the one
responsible for the original wrong. In such cases, however, there
must be the intervention of a new and independent cause between the
wrong and the injury.
Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Co. v.
Kellogg, 94 U. S. 469,
94 U. S. 475.
The doctrine finds apt illustration in the case of
Atchison,
Topeka & Santa Fe Ry. Co. v. Calhoun, 213 U. S.
1, where a child had been safely handed to a person
standing on the depot platform at which the passenger with the
child wished to alight; the train started, and the third person
attempted to place the child back upon the train while in motion.
The child was severely injured. It appeared, it will be observed,
that the child had been safely deposited at the station, and that
the Act of the third person in trying to put the child upon the
train was the intervening cause which rendered the negligence in
failing to stop the train or to assist the child therefrom at the
proper station no longer a proper ground of recovery. Assuming, as
we think we must, that Mrs. Mayer was acting within her rights as a
passenger in undertaking to assure herself that she was upon the
right train, we think the mere fact that she proceeded in the
manner stated was not, of itself, the intervention of another and
independent cause itself productive of the injury.
Upon the whole record, we find no reason to reverse the
judgment, and it is therefore
Affirmed.