KESSOWJI ISSUR Vs. GREAT INDIAN PENINSULA RAILWAY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellant was plaintiff in a suit against respondents, for damages for personal injuries alleged to have been sustained through their negligence. He was a passenger in a train of theirs from Bombay to Sion Station and his case was that, on the evening in question, the train overshot the platform at Sion and the passengers, on the implied invitation of the respondents, alighted where the train stopped ; that at this place it was dark and there were no lamps; that no warning was given to the appellant that the train had passed the platform or that special care must be taken in descending; that the appellant fell heavily and was seriously injured and for long disabled from business. There was no dispute as to the nature of the injuries.

(2.) The case went to trial, the respondents denying liability; evidence was led at great length and the trial lasted 10 days. The result was that the learned Judge who tried the case gave the appellant Rs. 24,000 ; and it is sufficient at present to say that the judgment presents a careful and complete analysis of the evidence.

(3.) Cases of overshooting the platform and resulting accidents to passengers have so frequently been tried and considered that no question of law arises for determination. The present case is only remarkable because the respondents (in the teeth of the written report of the Sion stationmaster, made the day after the accident, that the train had overshot the platform) maintained at the trial and adduced witnesses, including this very station-master, to prove the contrary and that the passengers duly alighted at the platform. This fatal course was really to give away the case ; it was proved to the satisfaction, even of the appellate Court, that the train did overshoot; and the respondents, by this perverse attitude, were disabled from maintaining any intelligible theory as to the conditions under which the passengers actually alighted. They could not pretend that the passengers were warned to take care and all their evidence as to lamps applied to a place where the accident did not happen. Jt my be noted in passing that the darkness which in fact prevailed is proved by a piece of real evidence to which sufficient weight has not been given, viz., that when it became known that a man was lying hurt, lights were brought from the station.