CACI 906 Duty of Passenger for Own Safety
California Civil Jury Instructions CACI
906 Duty of Passenger for Own Safety
While a common carrier must use the highest care for its passengers’ safety, passengers need only use reasonable care for their own safety.
New September 2003; Revised May 2017
https://crowdsourcelawyers.com/judicial-council-california-civil-jury-instructions-caci
Directions for Use
This instruction is intended to clarify that passengers and common carriers have different standards of care.
Sources and Authority
•“As applied to the standard of care imposed upon the common carrier as compared to the standard imposed on the passenger it is both erroneous and misleading to tell the jury, as was done here, that there are no degrees of negligence or contributory negligence in California, since the common carrier is in fact held to a higher degree of care than is the passenger. To follow this erroneous and misleading statement with the instruction, in the identical language used in another instruction concerning the defendant carrier’s duty of care, that ‘any negligence, however slight,’ of the decedent proximately contributing to her death would bar a recovery, was to inform the jury that in determining negligence and contributory negligence they must apply the same standard of care.” (Wilson v. City and County of San Francisco (1959) 174 Cal.App.2d 273, 276 [344 P.2d 828].)
•‘Whether unidentified passengers might be primarily or partially responsible for [plaintiff]’s injury, or whether she bears some responsibility for it herself, are questions for the trier of fact in considering causation.” (Huang v. The Bicycle Casino, Inc. (2016) 4 Cal.App.5th 329, 346 [208 Cal.Rptr.3d 591].)