Court says BART only liable on trains

The suit argued that BART, as a “common carrier” offering transportation services, had a legal duty to protect its passengers from harm that it might have prevented. Judge Robert McGuiness disagreed and dismissed the suit last February, and the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco upheld his decision Wednesday.

Because Cissney had not yet boarded a train, “the relationship of carrier and passenger had not yet been established,” Justice Alison Tucher said in the 30 ruling.

Tucher cited a state Supreme Court ruling from 1893 observing that a passenger “is exposed to countless hazards” while traveling, and is “wholly in (the) charge of the carrier,” but faces no similar dangers while waiting in the station.

She said the rule has some exceptions: A transit agency may have a special duty to protect a passenger who is being escorted to the boarding area by an employee or to protect passengers from mobile hazards, like cable cars passing through a boarding area or jet blasts from an airplane. But she rejected the lawsuit’s contention that BART was obliged to protect a passenger who was on an elevated platform and had no way to flee because the youths were blocking the entrances, stairways and escalators.

Under California case law, Tucher said, “standing on a BART platform waiting for a train to arrive does not establish that the carrier, before it has taken affirmative steps to accept a passenger onto a train, has a heightened duty to protect that prospective passenger from risks that are not incident to the journey itself.”

Cissney could ask the state Supreme Court to review the case. Her lawyer could not be reached for comment Friday. BART declined to comment on the ruling.