Hartfield v. Roper
New York Supreme Court
This was an action on the case, tried at the Oneida circuit in May, 1838, before the Hon. Robert Monell, one of the circuit judges. The suit was brought by the plaintiff William Hartfield, by his next friend, Gabriel Hartfield, for an injury sustained by being run over, as alleged, by the defendants, with a sleigh and horses, and having his arm broken.
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This was an action on the case, tried at the Oneida circuit in May, 1838, before the Hon. Robert Monell, one of the circuit judges. The suit was brought by the plaintiff William Hartfield, by his next friend, Gabriel Hartfield, for an injury sustained by being run over, as alleged, by the defendants, with a sleigh and horses, and having his arm broken. In March, 1836, the plaintiff, a child then of about two years of age. was standing or sitting in the beaten track of a public highway, and no person near him; the defendant Roper was driving a sleigh and horses upon the same road, and before…
1Opinion of the Court
By the Court,
Cowen, J.
The injury to this child was doubtless a very serious misfortune to him. But 1 have been utterly unable to collect, from the evidence, any thing by which the jury were authorized to impute such carelessness as rendered these defendants responsible. It is true, they might have seen the child from the turn of the road in descending, had they looked so far ahead; but something must be allowed for their attention to the management of the horses and their own safety in descending the hill to a bridge. So unobserving were they in fact, that Mrs. Lewis, who sat in the rear of…
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