Railway Accidents: Duties to passengers

Passengers were the most prominent victims of railway accidents. At the opening of the first passenger railway in England in 1830, a government minister was killed. Between 1872 and 1875, an average of 39 passengers were killed each year (and 1388 injured) in accidents involving collisions or derailments, and a further 119 were killed by other causes (and 362 injured), mainly as a result of being run down. Paying compensation for such accidents was less than 1% of the cost of running the railways.

In the 1850s, French law required that a passenger injured in a railway accident prove the fault of the railway company or its employees. But this was difficult. Following arguments by an academic Saleilles, the Cour de cassation (the highest French court) decided in 1911 that the contract for transporting passengers should be like that for transporting goods: in making a contract of transport, the carrier undertook to get the passenger ‘safe and sound to destination’. If the passenger was injured, then the company had to pay compensation, unless it could show that the injury followed from the act of the victim or from some external and unforeseen cause. The importance of this is seen in two contrasting cases, the first French and the second English.

In Noblet (1932), Captain Noblet was travelling back home on a train from Paris to Angers, but for some unexplained reason, he fell out of the train and was killed. His widow sued the train company successfully in the French courts. It had breached its promise to get him safe and sound to his destination, and the company was unable to show that the accident had occurred because of some external cause.

In Easson (1944), a boy was travelling on a compartment train when the door flew open and he fell onto the tracks and was killed. No one ever discovered why the door flew open. The boy’s parents were unsuccessful in suing in the English courts, because they were unable to show that the company had been at fault.