O'Rourke v. Cunard Steamship Company

Headnote

O’Rourke v. Cunard S. S. Co., Ltd., 169 App. Div. 943 , affirmed.

Appeal from a judgment of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the second judicial department, entered June 17, 1915, modifying and affirming as modified a judgment in favor of plaintiff entered upon a verdict in an action to recover damages for the alleged maltreatment, imprisonment and abuse of the plaintiff by the ship’s surgeon on a voyage of the defendant’s steamship Campania from Queenstown to New York in the month of April, 1911. The complaint pleaded the payment by the plaintiff of the requisite passage money and alleged a failure of the defendant to perform its contract to treat the plaintiff properly and carefully and carry her safely, in that the defendant through its agents and employees committed a series of wrongful and tortious acts that were set forth in detail. The answer denied- all the allegations of the complaint except that the plaintiff boarded the Campania at Queenstown as a third-class passenger for New York under a written contract of carriage, which was made a part of the answer, and which the defendant alleged that it duly performed. The contract thus pleaded was in the form of a “ Passengers’ Contract Ticket,” which was proved on the trial, and was made subject by its terms to the following condition: “ All questions arising on this ticket shall be decided according to English law, with reference to

which this contract is made.” It was contended that under the English law plaintiff was not entitled to recover.