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198 Pa. 583

Devlin v. Beacon Light Co.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Decided March 25, 1901

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 1901-03-25

Appeal, No. 75, Jan. T., 1901, by-defendant, from judgment of C. P. Delaware Co., Deo. T., 1897, No. 25, on verdict for plaintiff, in case of Sarah K. Devlin, a minor, by her next friend, James K. Devlin and James K. Devlin and Sarah Devlin, his Wife, v. Beacon Light Company. Trespass for personal injuries. Before Hemphill, P. J., specially presiding. The case was previously reported in 192 Pa. 188.

Relies on McCafferty v. Pennsylvania Railroad · Lonzer v. Lehigh Valley Railroad · Spear v. P. W. & B. R.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Affirmed · Decided 1901-03-25

How this case has been cited

Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently January 1944

20 state decisions

10019011910192019301940decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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¶1Opinion by

Mb. Justice Fell,

¶2When this case was here before, it was decided (1) that proof by the plaintiffs that the defendant’s workmen had allowed a wire charged with electricity to lie on the pavement of a main street without warning to those who passed by, established prima facie a case of negligence; (2) that a nonsuit should not have been entered on the ground that the plaintiff saw, or should have seen, the wire as she stepped from the crossing to the pavement, and was to be charged with contributory negligence in not avoiding the danger: Devlin v. Beacon Light Co., 192 Pa. 188. *585The defendant’s legal contention at the second trial was that, having shown by testimony that was neither contradicted nor discredited, that the wire had been cut out of the circuit and disconnected at both ends before it was placed on the pavement, and could not have been charged with electricity by the defendant’s dynamo, nor, because of its position, by contact with other wires, it was entitled to a peremptory direction in its favor. On this proposition all the assignments of error are based.

¶3The burden on the defendant was not satisfactorily to account for the accident, but only to show that it had used due care; and if the testimony produced by it was credited, it amounted to a demonstration that there was no cause of action. But whether the witnesses were entitled to belief was necessarily a question for the jury. The plaintiff showed a series of acts from which the inference of negligence on the part of the defendant arose; that inference was sufficient to carry the case to the jury; having once arisen, it remained until overcome by countervailing proof; whether so overcome was a question of fact which the court could not determine: Penna. R. R. Co. v. Miller, 87 Pa. 895; Penna. R. R. Co. v. Weiss, 87 Pa. 447; Spear v. Phila., Wilmington & Baltimore R. R. Co., 119 Pa. 61; McCafferty v. Penna. R. R. Co., 193 Pa. 339. The rule stated in Lonzer v. Lehigh Valley R. R. Co., 196 Pa. 610, that a verdict maybe directed where a different conclusion could not be reached by the jury without a capricious disregard of apparently truthful testimony that is in itself probable and is not at variance with any proved or admitted facts, does not apply where there is a conflict of testimony, unless that on one side amounts only to a scintilla.

¶4The judgment is affirmed.

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