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62 Am. L. Rev. 545 (1928)
High Care and Gross Negligence

handle is hein.journals/amlr62 and id is 549 raw text is: HIGH CARE AND GROSS NEGLIGENCE HIGH CARE AND GROSS NEGLIGENCE* It is often said that a common carrier of passengers is bound to use a high degree of care. This may mean that in carrying passengers ordinary prudence generally requires high care, and that a judge may tell the jury so. But in most states it means that the law requires from a carrier an exceptional duty as to care. The existence of such a duty was for a time hardly questioned, though courts differed somewhat as to its definition and the scope of its ap- plication.' In 1905, the Supreme Court of Maine2 repudiated the doc- trine altogether, and it has since been rejected in Indiana,3 and, at least so far as concerns the conduct of transporta- tion as distinguished from the provision of safe appliances, in New York.4 For example, in the recent cast of Pitts- burgh, C. C. & St. L. R. Ry. Co. vs. Stephens,5 a railway postal clerk had judgment for injury caused by running a train at excessive speed around a curve. The appellate court considered that the postal clerk, though upon the train in the course of his employment, was entitled to the care due to a passenger, but held that this was only the care reasonable under the circumstances, and reversed the judg- ment for error in telling the jury that a passenger is en- titled to the highest degree of practicable care. In Maine, Indiana, and New York alike, the court recognized that it was overruling decisions or disregarding dicta6 which had * Published with the consent of the Illinois Law Review. 1See 33 L. R. A. (N.S.) 855; 31 Harv. Law Rev. 306; 19 Col. Law Rev. 166; 32 Yale Law Jour. 841, 842. 2Raymond vs. Portland R. R. Co. (1905) 100 Me. 529, 62 Atl. 602, 3 L. R. A. (N.S.) 94; Pomroy vs. Bangor & A. R. R. Co. (1907) 102 Me. 497, 67 Atl. 561. ' (1919) 188 Ind. 514, 121 N. E. 655, 124 N. E. 737, 32 A. L. R. 1171. 'O'Brien vs. N. Y. Rys. (1919) 185 App. Div. 867, 174 N. Y. Supp. 116; Richardson vs. Nassau Electric Co. (1920) 190 App. Div. 529, 180 N. Y. Supp. 109; Kelleher vs. Atkinson (1922) 201 App. Div. 876, 193 N. Y. Supp. 939; Kelly vs. International R. R. Co. (1925) 214 App. Div. 652, 212 N. Y. Supp. 309. 'Appellate Court of Indiana (1927) 157 N. E. 58. OSee, for example, Bedford R. R. Co. vs. Rainbolt (1885) 99 Ind. 551;

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