Falls v. San Francisco & North Pacific Railroad

Paterson, J. This is an action to recover damages for personal injuries received by plaintiff upon the defendant’s platform at Reed’s Station, Marin County. The jury returned a verdict in favor of plaintiff for the sum of seven thousand five hundred dollars, and judgment was entered accordingly. Defendant appealed from the judgment, and from an order denying its motion for a new trial.

The plaintiff testified that on the nineteenth day of May, 1888, she went from San Francisco to Reed’s Station to attend a Sunday-school picnic. She returned to the station about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and sat on the side of the platform until the train came along on its way from San Rafael to Tiburón. While waiting for the train, about one hundred people who attended the picnic were passing up and down the platform and sitting along on the ties. As the train approached, she arose, and while passing along the platform to reach the rear end of a car which she intended to board, she tripped against something and fell. As she fell she noticed that the obstacles were milk-cans fastened together. Upon attempting to rise, she found it impossible to do so, and subsequently discovered that she had sustained a fracture of the pelvis and dislocation of the left hip. On cross-examination, plaintiff testified that she did not know how far she walked after she arose from the side of the platform, and she could not tell how many people were upon the platform at the time, but they seemed to be all around her. When asked as to how far along the platform she could see as she was walking, she replied' [118]that she was not looking at the platform at all, but was looking to see where she could get on the car; that she might have been in a little hurry, but did not know; that the ears were perfectly still at the time; that when the crowd started to go aboard, she followed; that it was perfectly light at the time; that the cans were lying about thirty feet from the place where she had been sitting, but she did not see them till she stumbled over them.

At the station there is a wooden building, fourteen by twenty-four feet, with a platform in front of it, extending to the first rail, and thirty feet in length. Between the rails of the track nearest the building the space is planked the same length as the platform attached to the station. Adjoining this there is a raised platform, 5 feet in width and 183 feet in length, raised 8 inches above the cross-ties. The station is one where trains stop for passengers or freight only upon receiving flag signals. The company keeps no agent there, and all freight received is left on the platform by the consignor, and taken up by the conductor and billed as per marks and instructions thereon. It is left upon the platform until the consignees take it away. There is a daily shipment of butter and milk from this station to the city. It is received at 6:20, a. m., and 5, p. m., and the empty cans and boxes are returned from San Francisco at 9:20, A. m., and 6:15, p. m., of the following day. The evidence shows that the cans could not conveniently be left at any other place than on the platform. The milk-cans and butter-boxes are carried in the baggage-car. At the time of the accident there were upon the platform two or more butter-boxes, and some milk-cans alongside of them. The cans and boxes were about the middle of the platform, with room enough to pass upon either side, — more room between the packages and the car than on the other side. The butter-boxes were two and a half feet wide, three feet long, and twelve or fourteen inches high.