Long v. Philadelphia

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Long v. Philadelphia, 212 Pa. 125 (Pa. 1905)
61 A. 810; 1905 Pa. LEXIS 566
Brown, Cubiam, Elkin, Fell, Mestrezat, Peb, Potter

Long v. Philadelphia

Opinion of the Court

Peb. Cubiam,

The main ground on which a reversal of the judgment is asked is that the jury were instructed that the city could be held liable only on the theory that it was doing the work on the avenue where the plaintiff was injured. This ground would be well taken if there had been no other instruction on the subject of the city’s liability, because a liability might have arisen if the work had been abandoned and the city had resumed possession of the street. But the instruction complained of was in connection with one branch of the case only. The jury had before been told that if the work had been abandoned the duty of taking care of the street was imposed on the city. When we consider, as we should, the whole instruction on the question of the city’s liability, we find the charge entirely free from error. Moreover, no ground of liability was shown and a *128verdict might properly have been directed for the city. The work was being done for railroad companies that had charter rights to lay tracks on the avenue. There had been no abandonment of it. It had been prosecuted day and night with vigor and was in the charge of the contractor.

The judgment is affirmed.

Reference

Status
Published
Syllabus
Negligence—Municipalities—Excavation in street occupied by railroad— Railroads. A city cannot be held liable for the consequences of an accident resulting from an excavation in a street, where it appeared that the street was occupied by the tracks of a railroad company, that the excavation in question had been made by a contractor of the railroad company in taking up and relaying the tracks, and that this work had not been abandoned but was in full progress when the accident occurred.