Wilson v. Cunningham

Decided July 15, 1853

California Supreme Court · decided 1853-07-15

The plaintiff complained that the defendants were engaged in running cars by machinery along Battery Street in the city of San Francisco, and across Bush Street in the same city, upon a railroad, and for their own purposes, and that plaintiff was passing along said Bush Street and across Battery Street with a horse and wagon and divers goods, &c., when the defendants, with their said cars carelessly and negligently came into collision with the said plaintiff and his wagon,…

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1853-07-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently December 1928

4 state decisions

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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Heydenfeldt, Justice,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court. Wells, Justice, concurred.

¶2In the case of railroads which are permanently established by law as a mode of conveyance, the rule is correctly stated by the respondent’s counsel, that the conductors are only required to use the ordinary care pertaining to that description of business. But no reason exists for extending such a rule to the present case., ^Where the streets of a city, forming, as usual, thronged thoroughfares, are diverted from their ordinary and legitimate uses, by special license, to a private person, for his own benefit, and for the pursuit of a business which involves constant risk and danger, no other rule is consistent with the safety and protection of the community, than that which demands extraordinary care.

¶3Judgment affirmed.