Lehman v. Brooklyn City Railroad — 14 N.Y. St. Rep. 575

Majority

p. 575

Mary Lehman, App’lt, v. The Brooklyn City Railroad Company, Resp’t.

(Supreme Court, General Term, Second Department,

Filed February 13, 1888.)

Headnote

Touts—injuria sine damno.

This action was brought to recover damages for the results of fright occasioned by this plaintiff, from seeing a horse belonging to the defendant running away. The horse was running toward the plaintiff hut did not come in contact with her, or cause her contact with any other object. Held, that the plaintiff had no cause of action, and that the complaint was properly dismissed upon the pleadings and opening.

p. 576

Appeal from a judgment in favor of defendant, entered on a nonsuit.

Charles J. Patterson, for app’lt; Morris & Pearsall, for resp’t.

From the complaint and the opening of the plaintiff’s counsel to the jury in this action these facts must be assumed by us on this appeal.

The plaintiff, who was a married woman in a state of pregnancy, was standing in the door of her husband’s house in Hicks street, in the city of Brooklyn, with her little child about four or five years of age, when a horse belonging to the defendant, and which had run away, and alone, dashed up the street at a high rate of speed with a whiffletree dragging after him. The horse plunged towards the woman, but his progress was arrested by a post against which he fell and put out his eye. The plaintiff sustained a severe shock from her fright, which brought on a long train of nervous diseases. The horse did not come in contact with the woman, but frightened her, and this action is to recover compensation for the injuries thus sustained.

The complaint was dismissed upon the pleadings and the opening, and the plaintiff has appealed from the judgment.

We have been unable to find either principle or authority for the maintenance of this action, and we have been referred to none by the counsel.

The judgment should be affirmed, with costs.

Barnard, P. J., concurs; Pratt, J., not sitting.