Cook v. Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority

The defendants (the MBTA and one of its bus drivers) appeal from a judgment awarding the plaintiff damages for injuries that she sustained as a result of their alleged negligence, arguing error in the trial judge’s refusals to direct verdicts in their favor and to give certain requested instructions to the jury. Mass.R.Civ.P. 50(a) &c 51(b), 365 Mass. 814, 816 (1974).

There was evidence to show the following facts. In 1979, the then eighty-four-year old plaintiff boarded the defendant’s bus. Pertinent MBTA rules in effect at that time provided that passenger aid “shall” be given “where its…