Bahrenburgh v. Brooklyn City, Hunter's Point and Prospect Park Railroad

Headnote

This was an action to recover for injuries alleged to have been sustained in consequence of defendant’s negligence.

Plaintiff was an infant three years and eight months old, living with his parents in Brooklyn. He escaped from home with his sister, six years old. While in the street they saw a clerk of their father’s, a young man twenty years old, driving a grocer’s wagon in his usual routine of business, and requested him to let them ride, which he did. In crossing defendant’s track plaintiff, who was seated on the end of the

seat, was jostled out and fell on the track about twenty-five feet in front of an approaching car. The driver did not perceive him in time to stop the car and it ran over him, inflicting the injuries complained of. There was nothing to prevent the driver seeing him; several persons shouted to him, and it appeared that the car could have been stopped in ten or twelve feet. Held, that the driver was negligent in not discovering plaintiff and stopping the car; that permitting the plaintiff to go on the street accompanied by his little sister only, if negligent, was not a proximate cause of the injury, but was too remote to be regarded, as at the time of the accident plaintiff was in the care of a person of suitable age; that it was not negligence, as matter of law, on the part of the latter to allow the boy to ride upon the seat, where and as he did; that was a question for the jury, and their decision is conclusive here.