Rothchild v. Central Railroad
Rothchild v. Central Railroad
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
The injury which led to this action was received by the plaintiff while she was in the act of alighting from the defendant company’s car at Tamaqua on the evening of the 22d of August, 1890. It appears that she fell between the steps of the car and the platform, and sprained her ankle so that for several weeks she was unable to walk without the aid of a crutch or cane. After she had substantially recovered from ■the effects of her fall it seems she thought the company ought to compensate her for it on the theoiy or ground that her fall was attributable to its unassisted negligence. Of course the mere fact that she fell and was injured furnished no.support to the charge of negligence. In the prosecution of her suit it devolved on her to show wherein the company was negligent, and the connection of its negligence with the injury to herself. ■ The learned court below concluded, upon a careful consideration of the evidence she submitted to sustain her claim, that she had failed to present a case for. the jury, and accordingly entered a compulsory nonsuit. From the refusal to set aside the nonsuit this appeal was taken.
The evidence showed that the platform was lighted. There was an electric light upon it from fifty to one hundred feet from the point where the plaintiff fell. That she did not notice it does not overcome the clear evidence that it was there, or convict the company of a neglect of its duty to its passengers. It does not appear that any one complained or suggested before the accident or at the time of it that the platform was insufficiently lighted. It requires more than a scintilla of evidénce to establish negligence, and that cannot be found in this case in support of either proposition relied on by the plaintiff.
The specifications of error are overruled and the judgment is affirmed.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Millie B. Rothchild v. Central Railroad of New Jersey
- Cited By
- 8 cases
- Status
- Published
- Syllabus
- Negligence—Railroads—Passenger—Platform—Light—Nonsuit. In an action against a railroad company by a passenger to recover damages for personal injuries received while alighting from a train, where plaintiff alleges that there was too wide a .space between the steps and the platform, a nonsuit is properly entered where the only witness who testified as to the width of the space stated that he thought that it was about sixteen or eighteen inches, but that he “ could not tell for sure,” and it appears that plaintiff could have shown the exact distance by actual measurement. In'such a case an averment that the platform was inadequately lighted is not sustained where one of the plaintiff’s witnesses testified that there was an electric light one hundred feet from the place where the accident occurred, and another witness stated that the electric light was only fifty feet away.