Jones v Boyce (1816) 1 Stark 493; 171 ER 540
Negligence; reasonable escape from danger; injury caused by a passenger’s response to an emergency.
A coach passenger who was injured while escaping an apparent danger could recover damages if the danger arose from the proprietor’s negligence and the passenger acted reasonably. The fact that the coach did not ultimately overturn did not, by itself, defeat the claim.
Facts
Jones was travelling on the outside of Boyce’s coach. Soon after it left an inn, a coupling rein broke while the coach was descending a slope. One of the leading horses became unmanageable, and the coachman steered towards the roadside to stop the horses.
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The coach struck wooden piles and a wheel was stopped by a post. There was evidence that the rein was defective and that the impact was violent. One witness described a wheel rising substantially off the ground and Jones being thrown forwards. The witness could not say whether Jones then jumped or was thrown off, but said that he would have jumped in Jones’s position as the best way to avoid danger.
The coach remained upright. Jones was found on the road with a broken leg. The defence produced evidence tending to show that there had been no necessity to jump.
Issues
Lord Ellenborough left two questions to the jury: whether the coach proprietor had failed to provide safe and proper means of conveyance, and whether that failure caused the injury. The second question required the jury to assess whether Jones’s response was a prudent attempt to escape danger or the result of unreasonable alarm.
Decision and reasoning
The jury found for Jones and awarded £300.
The judge explained that Jones did not have to prove he had been physically thrown from the coach. Recovery was possible if the defendant’s misconduct placed him in circumstances where a dangerous jump was a reasonable precaution against the apparent peril of remaining aboard.
However, the proprietor was not responsible for a passenger’s rashness or imprudence. There had to be reasonable grounds for alarm, and the defective rein had to be a cause of the injury. The jury had to decide whether a reasonable and prudent person would have acted as Jones did in extricating himself from the apparent danger.
Principle illustrated
The injured person’s decision to take evasive action does not automatically relieve the person who negligently created the emergency of responsibility. The response must be assessed in light of the danger reasonably perceived at the time. Evidence that staying aboard would ultimately have been safe was therefore relevant, but not conclusive.
Report: Jones v Boyce, King’s Bench, 20 December 1816.
