173 Wis. 473 | Wis. | 1921
The following opinion was filed January 11, 1921:
The law under which recovery is sought, sec. 1 of the act of April 22, 1908 (35 U. S. Stats, at Large, 65, ch..'49), provides in substance that every common carrier by railroad while engaged in interstate commerce shall be
“After the transom came down it was found that the bolts stripped because of their corroded condition, and the'tops of some of the sills were so badly decayed that the bolts pulled through from four to five inches of the decayed matter. Because of the construction of the car as described and the fact that the sills were decayed from above the plaintiff could not by the exercise of ordinary care know of this condition ; neither could he know that the bolts were corroded within and above the nuts because they were bidden frc-m view.”
The above we think is a fair statement of the situation, though defendant claims there was no decay or corrosion but only a split visible in the sills. Since the sills and bqlts were covered above by planks or boards forming the floor of the car, and were also covered below by the insulation, it is apparent that no inspection of the same could be made without taking this part of the car to pieces. We shall not here attempt to state the federal rule as to the duty of one carrier to inspect cars coming to it from another carrier, further than to state that such rule does not require the severing of integral parts of the car in order to discover possible decay or corrosion within. Nelson v. Southern R. Co. 246 U. S. 253, 38 Sup. Ct. 233, 62 L. Ed. 699. A rule requiring that would almost wholly arrest interstate commerce. It is therefore apparent that any reasonable
By the Court. — Judgment affirmed.
A motion for a rehearing was denied, with $25 costs, on March 8, 1921.