Chap. 328.—An ACT defining the duty and prescribing the liability of those
operating railroads as to overhead bridges and structures.

Approved February 14, 1900.

1. Be it enacted by the general assembly of Virginia, That where
any railroad track passes under any bridge or structure not sufficiently
high to admit of the safe passage of the cars upon such railroad tracks,
with the servants and employees standing at their posts of duty on said
cars, the person or persons, firm or corporation, operating said railroad
and running its trains thereon, shall erect and maintain, at proper
distance on each side of such bridge or structure, warning signals of
approved design, and in general use to warn the servants and employees,
or those operating such railroads, of the approach to such bridge or
structure, and the failure to erect and maintain such danger signals
shall make those operating such railroads liable in damages for the
death or injury of any employee or servant resulting from the in-
sufficient height of such bridge or structure, and no contract, ex-
pressed or implied, and no plea of, or defense based upon, the
contributory negligence of the servant or employee shall relieve
those operating such railroads of the hability hereby imposed. The
railroad commissioner is hereby authorized, by general or special reg-
ulations or order, to determine or approve the character and loca-
tion of any danger signal which may be erected and maintained to
comply with the provisions of this act, and any and every euch danger
signal constructed and located as the railroad commissioner shal] so
determine and approve shall be deemed within the meaning of this
act to be an approved danger signal and erected at the proper distance
on each side of such bridge.
2. This act shall be in force from April first, nineteen hundred.