69 S.E. 782 | N.C. | 1910
WALKER, J., concurring; BROWN and MANNING, JJ., dissenting. On 16 October, 1908, the plaintiff's wife, who had an infant six days old, was suddenly taken worse. The plaintiff asked the defendant's agent at Nebo to send a message to Dr. Brookshire at Bridgewater, 6 miles away. It was a little after 9 o'clock at night. The agent said that he would send it "if there was nothing the matter at the other end of the line." The message read as follows: "Dr. Brookshire, Bridgewater, N.C.: Come at once. My wife very sick. T. W. Carswell."
The plaintiff paid for the message. The message was received by the operator at Bridgewater, but was not delivered till 12 o'clock at night, when the plaintiff himself passed the station at Bridgewater, and the operator came out and handed him the message and asked him to deliver it to Dr. Brookshire. The plaintiff getting no response from Bridgewater, assumed that all was right at that end, and that the message had been received by the operator there (as in fact it had been), and (114) waited for two hours, trusting that the message had been delivered *89 and the doctor would come. But the doctor not arriving, and his wife getting worse, about 11 o'clock he left his wife, who was in such agony that he expected her to die before he returned, and in this great anxiety and mental suffering, he got on his mule and rode down to Bridgewater, where he found the doctor, who immediately returned with him. Dr. Brookshire testified that he was in his office that night from 8 o'clock till 12, when the plaintiff arrived, and would have gone promptly to the plaintiff's wife if he had received the message.
The defendant's operator at Bridgewater testified that he received the message about 9 o'clock, which was after office hours, and that he wired back to the operator at Nebo that he could not deliver it before 11 o'clock. There is no evidence that this message was communicated to the plaintiff. On the contrary, when the plaintiff offered to testify as to what the operator at Nebo told him, the evidence was excluded on the objection of the defendant. The reasonable inference is that he would have testified that the information he received was that the operator at Bridgewater had wired back that he would deliver the message. The plaintiff's conduct corroborates this, for he testifies that he remained for two hours longer waiting for Dr. Brookshire, expecting him to come.
This case is "on all-fours" with Carter v. Tel. Co.,
In Cogdell v. Tel. Co.,
There was ample evidence to submit the issue of negligence to the jury. The other exceptions are covered by repeated decisions of this Court, and need no discussion.
No error.