100 Mo. 555 | Mo. | 1890
Lead Opinion
This is an action for personal injuries in which the plaintiff recovered judgment in the circuit court for ten thousand dollars’ damages from which the defendant appeals.
At the time of the injury the defendant was carrying passengers on all its freight trains. The plaintiff by profession a minister of the gospel, aged about sixty-seven years, in good health, earning about seven hundred dollars per annum in his profession, took passage on one of defendant’s freight trains at Archie, a station, for Harrisonville, another station on defendant’s road, paying the usual fare to the conductor, and informing him of his place of destination. When the caboose in which plaintiff was riding, and which was at the rear end of the train, arrived at a point about one quarter of a mile from the depot at Harrisonville at which passengers were usually landed, the conductor came to him and said: “You will have to get off here; I am not going to stop when I start; I will not stop at the depot; I shall go on as fast as I can,” and leaving him went forward on the flat -cars loaded with coal in the train towards the engine and the depot.
The plaintiff seeing no other employes of the road about and being unacquainted with “the.ground around 'there” got off the caboose at the rear end thereof, and discovered that the train was stopping on a “fill,” and that the road-way on each side was fenced with a barbed-wire fence of five strands. His business being urgent3
Q. “Now state to the jury why you didn’t go on to the depot?”
A. “There was a barbed-wire fence right before me and one at my right side and I could not get. out. There was a young man on the other side of the train; it was Mr. Kerens, and he was a little more active than I was and got up on one of the flat cars, and I got up on that fiat car and walked the length of it until we passed over the culvert, and then I swung off and tried to get down as cautiously and prudently as I could. The -train was standing still at that time. In getting off I was probably considerably excited for fear the train would start; I was a long ways from the engine and I didn’t know when the engine would start; I hurried to get off, and when alighting I fell over so that I think my foot struck the end of one of the ties and snapped the leg right there.”
Q. “ State to the jury if it was hurt as you got off the train?”
A. “I hadn’t made a motion with the other foot until I felt my leg give way.”
A. “My sight is not as good as it was some years ago. I examined the ground before I got down; I thought I could make it.”
Q. “ State to the jury what was the condition of the ground there, so far as you could see ? ”
A. “The ground was quite descending; it was rather steep; it was lower from the sidetrack out to where the grade commenced; I thought it was pretty level where I looked and where I was stepping; I looked as well as I could hurriedly; I saw no reason why I could not make it safely; near the ties, if I remember rightly, it was level; that is my recollection of it, and it descended rapidly a few feet farther.”
On cross-examination:
Q. “ Describe the manner in which you got off the car.”
A. “Well, I remember of holding to the car in front of me with one hand; I was considerably exercised for fear that they would start. I was hurrying and using all the care and caution that I could. I remember of putting my hand on the car in front of me, but whether I had hold of anything with my right hand, I could not say. I was between the freight cars and had hold of the one in front of me with my left hand. I do not know what I had hold of with my right hand. I do not know that I could have reached anything.”
Q. “Then you put your hand on the car and sprang to the ground \ ”
A. “Well, yes, sir; I sprang as far as I thought necessary; was as careful as I could be.”
Q. “Do you know the height of those cars? ”
A. “No, sir, I do not.”
Q. “ Can you approximate it ? ”
A. “It would be guess wofk. I should think
Q. “ The train was still there when they took you away?”
A. “Yes, sir.”
Q. “ When you called to Mr. Kerens to get assistance he was off the train,' was he not?”
A. “Yes, sir.”
Q. “ He had gotten off on the ground ?” A. “Yes, sir; I think it was from the flat car ahead of me.”
The fracture was an obligue one of both bones of plaintiff’s left leg. The external bone was fractured into the ankle joint; the internal bone was fractured higher up. The plaintiff, after the injury, received prompt surgical attention, was confined to his bed about ten days, and his leg kept bandaged for about two months, and then he- began gradually to regain the use of it with the assistance of crutches.
The defendant offered no evidence, but at the close of plaintiff’s evidence asked and the court refused an instruction in the nature of a demurrer to the evidence of the plaintiff, and thereupon the case was submitted to the jury under instructions asked for by the plaintiff, and a verdict returned in his favor for the amount for which judgment was rendered. '
It is urged as ground for reversal that the court erred in refusing to sustain defendant’s demurrer to the evidence and in refusing a new trial for excessive damages.
I. There is nothing in the evidence tending to show the existence of any rule, regulation or custom on defendant’s road in discharging passengers from its freight trains different from those applicable to passengers upon its regular passenger trains, and the plaintiff having been received by the defendant as a passenger upon its freight train, into a car appropriated to the purpose of carrying passengers, incurred the duty of transporting him in safety, so far as his safety could be secured
The duties that impelled the plaintiff to take passage on defendant’s train were demanding his presence at the point of his destination. Thus far he had done all he could to meet the requirements of his sense of those duties, but now he was about to fail, and must fail to meet the requirements of those personal duties, unless he takes up the discharge of defendant’s duty thus unexpectedly, and against his will, thrust upon him of finding a way and transporting himself to the station; to do this on foot and by the way that seemed to him most practicable was the only course left open to him; to this course he was constrained by defendant’s neglect
Putting one’s self then in the place of the plaintiff, when and where he was set afoot beside the defendant’s caboose, ignorant of the topography of the country, and of the obstacles in his way, and uninformed as to when the train would move, what would be expected of an ordinarily prudent man in his effort to reach the station as expeditiously as he bad hoped to reach it, when he entrusted himself to the defendant’s care? He must go forward; he could not expect to reach it by turning back upon the track he had just passed over; a barbed-wire fence on each side forbade an attempt to leave the roadway either to the right or left to seek some other feasible route to the station; and he immediately starts forward, alongside the train upon the only route apparently open to him. He has proceeded but a short distance when he discovers that his further progress in that direction is effectually barred, except by way of the top of the flat car resting on the bridge. The conductor when he parted from the plaintiff after ordering him to disembark had passed forward on similar cars, similarly loaded, and presumably on this car over the bridge. Another passenger who had taken passage with him, at the same time and
We fail to discover, in the course of his whole progress, a single movement that might not have been reasonably expected of an ordinarily prudent man, seeking to make his way expeditiously to the station from the point where the defendant had placed him ; he followed the only way the defendant had left open to him to pursue his journey. It had caused him to alight from its train at an unsuitable and dangerous place distant from the place of his destination. Its neglect of duty was continuous from that time up to and inclusive of the moment in which he was injured, and because of that neglect and not by reason of any act of his own volition he was compelled to resort to the car to cross' the bridge and to leave the car after the bridge was crossed ; in so doing he was injured. The neglect of duty and the injury were not only cotemporaneous and coincident, but the latter was the direct and immediate result of the former, so far as a physical effect can be the direct result of a moral cause.
There ought to be no difficulty in distinguishing such a case from those, in which a purely voluntary action intervenes between an injury, and a completed act of neglect, but for which such voluntary action might not have been taken, or from those other cases in
The rule that ought to obtain in this case is well stated by Thompson, J., in Winkler v. Railroad, 21 Mo. App. at page 106: “If a railway carrier, instead of discharging his passenger at the place of destination called for by the contract of carriage, lands him at another place, from which he cannot reach the place of destination by any practicable route without encountering a serious danger, and the passenger immediately thereaf-' ter, proceeding by the only practicable route to the place of destination, without fault or negligence on his part, encounters such danger and is hurt, we have no difficulty in saying that the hurt is a proximate consequence of the wrong done by the carrier. A prudent carrier would foresee such danger to the passenger, and should, we think, be held bound to foresee it and to answer the consequences of it.” See also N. Y., etc., & St. Louis Ry. Co. v. Doan, 1 L. R. Ann. (Ind.) 157, and cases cited in note on p. 158. And in this case we have no difficulty in saying that the plaintiff’s injury was the proximate result of defendant’s neglect, and that no negligence of the plaintiff contributed to that injury. There was no error therefore in the action of- the court in overruling defendant’s demurrer to the evidence. On the evidence the plaintiff ought to have had a verdict and judgment for a reasonable amount as damages for his injury.
II. The amount of damages in cases of this kind must be left largely to the discretion of the jury, and their verdict ought not to be disturbed unless the amount is so gross as to shock the sense of justice -of the judicial mind, and satisfy it that such verdict must have been the result of passion, prejudice or partiality. In view of the age of the plaintiff, his income, the physical
being of the opinion that plaintiff ’ s eviden ce failed to show facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action against the defendant the judgment will simply be reversed.
Rehearing
On Rehearing.
Upon further consideration of this case on the motion for rehearing it seems to me that the question whether or not the injury, which plaintiff sustained, was referable to the wrongful act of defendant, complained of, as a proximate cause, was a proper one to submit to the jury. The facts do not appear to me sufficiently free of doubt on that point to justify the decision of it as a question of law. That is the feature
As to the question of plaintiff’s alleged contributory negligence, it seems to me that it was fairly a question of fact in the circumstances here shown. The opinion of Brother Bbace fully states the essential facts and they need not be repeated now.
This brief statement of my conclusions will probably suffice in the premises, since the cause must be retried, all my brethren agreeing that the judgment should be reversed, though not entirely united on the reasons therefor. A majority of the court is now of opinion that, upon such reversal, the cause should be remanded for further proceedi ngs, and that the motion for rehearing be overruled;