Rice v. New York Central & Hudson River Railroad
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Tort, by a railroad mail clerk in the employ of the United States, for injuries from being squeezed between two mail cars while attempting to alight from a train of the defendant at its station in Worcester. Writ dated December 4,1908. At the trial in the Superior Court CfasJcill, J. at the close of the plaintiff’s evidence ordered a verdict for the defendant, and reported the case for determination by this court.
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Tort, by a railroad mail clerk in the employ of the United States, for injuries from being squeezed between two mail cars while attempting to alight from a train of the defendant at its station in Worcester. Writ dated December 4,1908. At the trial in the Superior Court CfasJcill, J. at the close of the plaintiff’s evidence ordered a verdict for the defendant, and reported the case for determination by this court. If the ruling was right judgment was to be entered on the verdict; otherwise, a new trial was to be granted.
1Opinion of the CourtBarker, J.
We assume that the plaintiff as a postal clerk employed by the post office department of the general government upon the defendant’s train stood to the carrier in the gen*522eral relation of a passenger,* although that relation was modified to some degree by the circumstances that his position and movements in the postal cars and his leaving or returning to those cars, and the internal arrangement and use of those cars and of the appliances and utensils within them designed to facilitate the care and disposition of the mails, were not in the control of the defendant, but of the postal officials…
2Cases cited1 opinion
- Stoddard v. New York, New Haven, & Hartford RailroadMassachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · 1902
3Cited by1 opinion
- Kelley v. New York Central RailroadMassachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · 1926