Campbell v. Los Angeles Railway Co.

COOPER, C.

Action to recover damages for personal injuries. The case was tried before the court, without a jury, and judgment entered for defendant. Plaintiff brings this appeal from the judgment and order denying his motion for a new trial.

There is no controversy about the facts, which are substantially as follows: At about 11 o’clock, on the night of March 4, 1899, the plaintiff entered one of defendant’s street-cars at Second Street, in the city of Los Angeles, and paid the regular fare. It was an electric car, having an open dummy at each end, which was provided with two seats for passengers, four feet long, running parallel with the car on each side of the part of the car called the “dummy,” and facing outward. The place occupied by the motorman was

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between these two seats. The plaintiff took a seat near the front of the dummy, to the left of the motorman and near him, and desired to be let off the car at Sixth Street. The car was going at the rate of about ten miles an hour. Plaintiff testified that shortly after the car passed Fifth Street he twice told thé motorman to stop at Sixth Street; that the motorman did not make any sign, motion, or reply, and took no notice of plaintiff’s request to stop. The motorman testified that he did not hear plaintiff request him to stop the car until while crossing Sixth Street, when plaintiff touched his left arm and said, “Stop at Sixth Street.” Plaintiff testified that as the car was crossing, or partly across, Sixth Street he said to the motorman, “Why the devil don’t you stop at Sixth Street?” Thereupon the motorman immediately proceeded to slow up, and, while doing so, told plaintiff not to get off till the car stopped. The plaintiff, when the car had almost stopped, stepped off the ear before it had come to a full stop, and in doing so fell and broke his right hip, severely injuring himself. Plaintiff testified: “I occasionally stepped off the car while the car was in motion, and stepped off once in the night a short time before this. I stepped off the car occasionally, and up to the time of this accident would occasionally do so in the daytime, but latterly I was very cautious about it. But at night I would not get off the car before it had stopped, for the reason that I had met with what you allude to. I had attempted to get off one night when the car was in motion, and the result of it was that I fell and shook myself up, just as I thought I was shaken up on this night; 'but it gave me a lesson, and never after would I get off these cars at night when they were in motion, if I knew it. ’ ’ The place where the car was stopped was about one hundred and fifty feet beyond Sixth Street, and was as safe a place as the crossing at Sixth Street.