Jamison

This action was brought to recover damages sustained by the plaintiff, Mary E. Jamison, while a passenger on defendant’s road; and a trial having been had in the late district court of the Twentieth Judicial District, judgment passed in favor of the plaintiffs for the sum of $300 damages, from which judgment the appeal in this case was taken.

It appears from the evidence that in the month of September, 1876, the city of San Jose was causing Los Gatos Creek to be widened at a point where it is crossed by defendant’s road; that an excavation was made on the east side of the creek, leaving the bridge spanning the creek propped and still standing; that at the time the excavation was twenty feet wide, leaving for that distance a chasm twelve feet deep between the edge of the east bank and the east edge of the bridge, over which there were no means *106 of passage, except upon the railroad track, which was undermined and had been propped, and boards laid along the rails, but over which the cars did not and could iiot pass. As a part of the means used and adopted by the defendant for the transportation of its passengers across the chasm above referred to, defendant laid a line of planks…