18 Kan. 458 | Kan. | 1877
The opinion of the court was delivered by
In the trial in the district court, it appeared that this action was brought by Reisner, defendant in error, a hotel-keeper, against one H. Hyde, and the Atlantic & Pacific railroad company to recover $104, and interest, for board, room, and lodging furnished to one William Hurdle, a disabled employé of the railroad company, from April 2d to May 1st 1873, at two dollars per day, and also for the services of an attendant for nineteen days at one dollar per day, and for certain bandages of the value of three dollars. The following is Reisner’s testimony, and is all the evidence introduced to the court:
*459 “I am ‘the plaintiff in this action. In the months of April and May 1873, I was keeping a hotel, the same one that I now keep, and it is called the Tremont House. Mr. Hyde was the agent of the railroad company at this place, and attended to their business here. A man by the name of Hurdle got hurt while working for the company as a brakeman, somewhere below town, on a bridge. Mr. Hyde had him brought to my hotel, and sent for a doctor to care for him, and employed me to board, take care of, and nurse him, and said that the company would pay me, and that he would guarantee the payment of my account. He employed me to board him for the railroad company, as agent for the said company. I knew that he was doing business for the company, as agent, during this time. I asked him once or twice for pay, but have never received a dime. My account here in court, and annexed to the petition, is just, and the services reasonable, and worth the amount charged in my bill. This man was sick, and we waited on him nearly a month. I hired a person to take care of him. I knew Mr. Hyde was the general agent of said road at Atchison, and station-agent for this company, and he said the company would pay me, and that he would guarantee it; and neither said Hyde nor said company have ever paid me any part of my said' account.”
Judgment was rendered against both defendants in the court below; and the railway company brings the record here, and seeks to reverse the judgment against itself. The railway company assumes in the argument presented to this court, that Hyde, the person who made the arrangement with the defendant in error for the board and services sued for, was only a station-agent of the railway company, and that neither his duties nor his authority gave him power to bind the company, so as to make it liable in this action. The authorities cited sustain the proposition that a station-agent of a railroad company is not authorized, by virtue of his position as such agent, to employ a hotel-keeper, at the expense of the company, to attend to one of its brakemen, injured while working for the company, nor to furnish such employés with board and lodging while disabled. Tucker v. St. Louis, K. C. & Northern Rly. Co., 54 Mo. 177; Cooper v.
It does not appear from the evidence that there was any legal liability on the part of the railroad company to furnish board and attendance to the brakeman. Still, we do not think this proof was necessary to establish the liability of the company to Reisner. It was proven that the brakeman was hurt while in the employ of the company; and it is not unfrequent for railroad companies and other corporations to furnish board and medical attendance to employés disabled in the service of such companies, even when the injuries are not the result of the negligence of the corporation. Such action, whether resulting from humane or selfish motives, is certainly to be commended; and no court would hold the contract of a railroad company duly entered into for such an object as ultra vires, and incapable of being enforced. Hyde,
The judgment will be affirmed.