CACI No. 906. Duty of Passenger for Own Safety
Judicial Council of California Civil Jury Instructions (2025 edition)
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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
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].)
Secondary Sources
2 Levy et al., California Torts, Ch. 23, Carriers, § 23.07[1] (Matthew Bender)
11 California Forms of Pleading and Practice, Ch. 109, Carriers (Matthew Bender)
2 California Civil Practice: Torts § 28:32 (Thomson Reuters)
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© Judicial Council of California.
