260 Mo. 351 | Mo. | 1914
— This is an action to recover damages for personal injuries received by plaintiff while working in defendant’s coal mine near Novinger, Missouri. Suit was instituted in Adair county and on change of venue was sent to Knox county where trial was had resulting in a verdict and judgment in favor of plaintiff in the sum of $23,666. That portion of plaintiff’s petition charging; negligence is as follows:
“The defendant negligently, carelessly and recklessly set him to work in one of the rooms in said Mine number 50, known as room number 4 off the 10th west entry off the main south entry, at a place in said room where the rock, earth and other materials form- ' ing the roof of said room were in a loose and dangerous condition and liable to fall at any time; and did negligently, carelessly and recklessly fail and neglect to warn or notify the said plaintiff that the roof of said room, at the point and place where plaintiff was compelled to be in order to perform the work as directed, was in a loose and dangerous condition as aforesaid; but said defendant, its agents, employees and mine foreman did carelessly, negligently and recklessly assure this plaintiff that the roof of said room at the place aforesaid was in a safe and secure condition, and this plaintiff believing said foreman possessed superior knowledge of said roof, relied upon said statement and assurance and set about the work as directed; and this defendant had negligently, carelessly and recklessly failed and neglected to furnish and provide a safe, competent and proper man in charge of said room, and did negligently, carelessly, and recklessly fail and neglect to furnish and provide safe, competent and proper men in charge of said mine us mine foreman, and did negligently, carelessly and recklessly fail and neglect to furnish the said plaintiff with a reasonably safe, sufficient and proper place in which to perform his duties, and did negligently, carelessly and recklessly fail and neglect to warn or notify the said plaintiff of the*358 dangers of working in said room, this plaintiff being then and there an inexperienced miner, and ignorant by reason thereof of the dangers lurking in said roof of said mine, which said facts the defendant well knew or by the exercise of ordinary care could have known.”
The petition further alleges that by reason of the negligence and carelessness of the defendant, as above stated, and without any warning to him, a large slab of rock from the roof of said mine fell upon plaintiff. Defendant’s answer contained, (1) a general denial, (2) that plaintiff’s injury “was due solely to his own negligence and carelessness in not properly taking care of and securing said room and the roof thereof,” (3) plea of assumed risk.
Plaintiff’s evidence tended to establish the following facts: At the time plaintiff was injured he was working in said mine in a room which was about twenty feet wide and fifty feet long; the roof of the room being a short distance above plaintiff’s head. While he was at work picking up some loose rock from the floor of this room, a slab of rock, nine feet wide and about eleven feet long and varying in thickness from a “feather edge” to eighteen inches, fell from the roof of the mine upon him. Prior to the accident, plaintiff had worked in this room about three and one-half days, three days of the time being spent in the work of digging coal. On the day preceding the day of the accident, plaintiff set 33 props under the roof in this room and drilled some holes and loaded them with powder. After he left the mine that day, these holes were fired, as was the custom, by the shot-firers. The next morning (the day that the injury occurred) plaintiff returned to the mine about 6:30 a. m., and after warming himself in the boiler room went down into said mine and to said room. Upon arriving there he found that during the night a considerable quantity of rock had fallen from the roof of the room and that the props had fallen (caused, possibly, by the firing
Plaintiff’s instructions numbered 1, 2, 3,- 4 and 5, which are challenged by appellant, are as follows:
“1. The court instructs the jury that if you believe from the greater weight of evidence in the cause: That at the’time plaintiff was injured he was in the employ of the defendant company as a laborer in the ground of defendant’s mine, and that he was in the charge of and under the control and direction of one D. P. Shaw, as mine foreman in said mine, and that Said Shaw was employed by the defendant to act as such foreman; and if you further believe that as such foreman said Shaw had authority, and that it was his duty, to have charge of and direct the work and the manner*363 in which plaintiff was engaged at the time he was injured ; and that it was the duty of the plaintiff to obey the orders and directions of said mine foreman as to the place and manner of doing' the work in said mine at the time plaintiff was injured; that while so engaged and in obedience to the commands and directions of said mine foreman the said foreman negligently directed plaintiff to clean up the rock and other debris in room No. 4 referred to in plaintiff’s petition and prior to said command had assured said plaintiff when inquired of, whether it was safe to work in said room on account of the top or overhanging rocks, that it was safe and that the plaintiff in obedience to said orders, and relying upon said assurance did go to work and commence to clean up the rock and other debris in said room and while in obedience to said orders he was in the discharge of the duty and.work assigned him a large slab of rock fell from said top or roof which resulted in plaintiff’s injuries then the plaintiff is entitled to recover in this action, unless precluded for some other reason assigned in the further instructions given you.
“2. The court instructs the jury that notwithstanding you may believe from the evidence in the cause that the plaintiff knew, or by the exercise of ordinary care on his part could have known, that the position he was working in, at the time he was injured, in room 4, in question, was not a safe one, yet, this does not and should not defeat his recovery in this-case; if you further find and believe from the evidence that he was negligently ordered into this position by the defendant’s mine foreman, D. P. Shaw, and was assured by the said Shaw that the slab of rock that fell on plaintiff would not fall and that the danger from the said slab of rock overhanging said place was not of such glaring and dangerous nature as to threaten immediate injury in case he obeyed said order.
*364 “3. The court instructs the jury that if you find and believe from the greater weight of the evidence in the cause that the slab of rock which fell upon and injured the plaintiff was in a loose and dangerous condition in the roof of room number 4 of defendant’s mine number 50 on the morning* of November 24, 1908, and that the defendant’s foreman D. P. Shaw inspected and sounded the same and found the same to be loose and in a dangerous condition and liable to fall or if by the exercise of ordinary care on his part he could have discovered the loose and dangerous condition thereof by said inspection, if the same was in a loose and dangerous condition, if you find that.he did so inspect said rock, and assured plaintiff that it would not fall and that after the said assurance on his part he ordered plaintiff to work in said room beneath said slab of rock, then said order was negligently made and said assurance was negligently given within the meaning of these instructions, unless the danger was of. such a glaring nature that no prudent person, under the circumstances, would have obeyed the order.
“4. The court instructs the jury that they are the sole judges of weight and credibility of the testimony of the witnesses in this case and if they find and believe that any witness has wilfully sworn falsely to any material facts at issue in this case, then the jury are at liberty to disregard the whole or any part of such witness’s testimony.
‘ ‘ 5. The court instructs the jury that if you find the issues for the plaintiff, in .determining the measure of damages, you may take into consideration the mental and physical pain and suffering endured by plaintiff since said injury in consequence thereof, the character and extent of said injury and its continuance, if permanent, together with his loss of time and service. And you may find for him in such sum as in the judgment of the jury, under the evidence, will be reasonable compensation for the injury, not to exceed*365 the sum of thirty-nine thousand, nine hundred dollars.”
It is true that plaintiff’s evidence tended to show that, ordinarily, it was the duty of plaintiff to look out for his own safety in the room in which he worked and that the duty of the defendant was to furnish such props as might be required for use in propping the roof. But even though, as a general proposition, this be conceded, yet, when defendant’s vice-principal, the foreman, came into the room and in answer to plaintiff’s question or request undertook or assumed the duty of making an inspection as to the safety or soundness of the roof it undoubtedly then (if not before) became the duty of the defendant to exercise ordinary care to ascertain the true condition of the roof and (at least) to inform plaintiff of the facts that ah ordinarily careful inspection would have revealed.
In discussing a very analogous situation, involving the care that defendant should exercise in performing an assumed duty, the Supreme Court of Illinois in' the case of Consolidated Coal Company v. Scheiber, 167 Ill. 539, l. c. 545, said:
“Whether, therefore, it was the duty of appellant (the defendant company) or not to prop the roof, still, if it assumed that duty and undertook to discharge it, and did so in such a careless manner that the'roof was thereby loosened and rendered more liable to fall, and the plaintiff was in the exercise of due care for his own safety, as alleged and as necessa*367 rily found by the jury, the appellant would be liable. Saving undertaken to perform the loork it became its duty to perform it in a proper manner, whether bound in the first place to perform it at all or not.” (Italics ours.)
The evidence in the case at bar does not show-that the danger was so' obvious and glaring that a reasonably prudent man would not have continued to work in said room and plaintiff testified that he relied upon the assurance of safety made by the foreman. Under the facts disclosed by the evidence it should not therefore be said that plaintiff was guilty of contributory negligence as a matter of law. [Swearingen v. Mining Company, 212 Mo. 524; Hamman v. Central Coal and Coke Company, 156 Mo. 232.] It follows therefore that the court did not err in overruling the demurrer to the evidence.
II. It is further contended that the court erred in giving plaintiff’s instructions numbered 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. (Instructions are copied in full in foregoing statement.)
Plaintiff’s instruction number 1 undertakes to cover the whole case, at least the whole case so far as the actionable negligence of defendant is concerned. It will be noticed that this instruction does not require the jury to find that the assurance was neg*li
It will be noticed that the petition fails to specifically allege impotency, neither does it contain an allegation of a general nature which might be said to embrace within its terms the condition of impotency. It is true that impotency might result from the injuries described, so might paralysis and many other diseases or conditions, but it cannot be said that impotency would necessarily result from the injuries detailed or described. If a condition or disease necessarily results or follows an injury there could be no valid reason for requiring the same to be specifically pleaded, because it would be presumed that the defendant would know, or at least be expected to discover before trial, those results or conditions which are necessarily produced by the injury alleged. Under such circumstances defendant would have ample opportunity to inquire into and to investigate the conditions so resulting and thereby be enabled to come to the trial of the cause fully prepared to present to the triers of the facts such defense as the results of his investigation might warrant. But where the condition or result is not a necessary result, how can the defendant be apprised of such issue unless the plaintiff (who certainly has full information on the subject) be required to state such result or condition in his petition? If plaintiff is not required to so plead, then, in effect, he is given license to ambush defendant in the trial contest by springing an issue as to special damages which the defendant could not have foreseen. And whpre the petition is such as in the case at bar, defendant could not have aided the situation by filing a motion to make more specific, because the petition contains no general terms which would by being made more specific un
“ General damages are those which necessarily and by implication of law .result from the act or default complained of. . . . Special damages as contra-distinguished from general damages have been defined as those which are the natural but not the necessary result of the act complained of.” [8 Am. & Eng. Ency. Law (2 Ed.), 542-3; Brown v. Railroad, 99 Mo. 310; Nicholson v. Rogers, 129 Mo. 136.]
“Special damages, which are the natural but not necessary result of the injury complained of, must be specifically alleged. Such injuries do not necessarily result from the defendant’s wrongful act, but flow from it as a natural and proximate consequence; hence they must be specially alleged in order that the defendant may have notice thereof and be prepared to meet the same upon the trial.” [5 Ency. Pl. and Prac. 719, and numerous cases therein cited; Brown v. Railroad, supra; Nicholson v. Rogers, supra; Bliss on Code Pleading (3 Ed.), par. 297a, 297b; 13 Cyc. 176.]
The rule above announced seems to be in conflict with what is said on that subject in the case of Gurley v. Railroad, 122 Mo. 141, and the majority opinion in the case of Moore v. Transit Company, 226 Mo. 689. The exact point raised in the. Gurley case is not disclosed with sufficient clearness to enable us to determine whether it in fact conflicts with the conclusions herein announced; hut the Moore case, at least in a part of the discussion of the subject and in the result reached on the point, is in conflict with the rule which is herein announced. After a careful review of the authorities, we have come to the conclusion that those cases, in so far as they conflict with the conclusion herein reached, should be no longer followed.
Upon a careful consideration of the subject and review of the authorities we have come to the conclusion that the correct rule, the rule which has for its
“It is a well known fact that from certain kinds of physical injuries, certain results will thereafter inevitably follow. In other words, that such injuries will naturally produce certain conditions and diseases. In such case an allegation in the petition of the injury inflicted would justify proof of such conditions and diseases as would of necessity follow the injury and as to such conditions and diseases the defendant must come prepared to defend. But, on the other hand, there are other physical injuries which may or may not produce resulting conditions or diseases. For instance, an injury ,to the lung might superinduce pneumonia, but not necessarily so. An injury, to the nervous system might produce blindness, but not necessarily so. These conditions or diseases last mentioned may as readily come from other causes as from the physical injury or injuries. In such case the petition should be specific, to the end that the defendant could come prepared to meet the issues and show that the condition or disease was not caused by the physical injury. This he cannot do if the unpleaded conditions or diseases are sprung upon him for the first time at the trial. ’ ’
It therefore follows that the allegations of the petition were not sufficient to justify the admission of proof of impotency and the court erred in admitting such evidence over defendant’s objection and exception. [Campbell v. Cook, 86 Tex. 630; Jones v. Railroad, 71 N. Y. Supp. 647; Missouri, Kansas & Texas Ry. Co. v. Cook, 8 Tex. Civ. App. 376; Page v. President, etc., of D. & H. C. Co., 76 App. Div. (N. Y.) 160.]
Tbe judgment is reversed and the cause remanded.
— By reason of the fact that paragraph III of tbe foregoing opinion conflicted with tbe majority opinion of tbe Court in Banc in tbe case of Moore v. Transit Company, supra, this cause was transferred to Court in Banc for final' determination, and in Banc the opinion of "Williams, C., was adopted,