Haycroft v. Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Co.

Headnote

This was an action to recover damages for injuries sustained by plaintiff in consequence of being struck by an engine of defendant at a street-crossing. (Reported below, 2 Hun, 489 .).

Plaintiff, a girl sixteen years old, was passing along a street in the city of Buffalo, going south, across defendant’s tracks (five in number). She had crossed two of these tracks. She looked both ways, and saw a train approaching from the east, on the fifth track. She stopped for this train to pass, standing between the second and third tracks, within about a foot of the third. She had been standing thus a short time, and, about as the train she was watching passed, she was struck and injured by the tender of a locomotive backing up from the west, on the third track, which gave no warning, by ringing a bell or sounding a whistle, of its approach. The plaintiff was nonsuited at the Circuit, on the ground of contributory negligence. Held, error; that the question was one of fact for the jury.