68 Mo. 329 | Mo. | 1878
This suit was instituted in the Livingston county circuit court for damages. The petition alleged the •incorporation of defendant, and that, on the 9th day of September, 1874, Mrs. Sarah flicks, wife of her co-plaintiff, E. M. Hicks, and her two infant children, were received by defendant, into its passenger train, at Kansas City, Missouri, to be carried to Utica, Missouri, she having purchased a ticket for passage between said points ; that on the arrival of said train at Breckenridge, a station about ten miles west of Utica, the defendant, by its conductor and agents, by force, and against the will, consent and protest of Mrs. Hicks, ejected and put her out of said passenger train at about the hour of ten o’clock at night, where she' remained exposed to the cold for about one hour, when a freight train arrived on which she took passage and was carried to Utica; that in consequence thereof, she and her children were greatly exposed and made sick, and that she had sustained damage in the sum of $1,000. Except as to the incorporation of defendant, the answer contained a specific denial of the allegations of the petition. On a trial of the cause plaintiffs obtained judgment for $700— $200 of which was remitted — and from this judgment defendant has appealed, and assigns for error the action of the court in refusing to receive legal evidence, and in giving improper and refusing proper instructions.
L During the progress of the trial defendant asked witness McCoy who was telegraph operator at Utica, what defendant’s regulations were as to passenger train No. 4 (which was the train on which Mrs. Hicks took passage) stopping at Utica station ? The court refused to allow the witness to answer.
It will be observed that the answer of defendant does not set up any regulation of the company requiring said train not to stop at said station. It only traverses the petition and puts in issue the facte therein alleged. The.evidence offered was not relevant to any issue made by the pleadings. If defendant intended to rely upon a regulation of the company, showing that the train upon which Mrs. Hicks was a passenger, did not stop at Utica, it should have been pleaded and set up in the answer, so as to have afforded plaintiffs an opportunity of putting it in issue, and preparing to meet it at the trial. No such issue having been tendered in the pleadings, it could not be made in the evidence. Greene v. Gallagher, 35 Mo. 226.
Defendant, after showing by the conductor of the freight train, which carried the plaintiff from Breckenridge to Utica, that it left the former place ten minutes behind the passenger, andby McCoy, the agent of defendant at Utica, that it reached the latter place fifteen minutes behind the passenger, offered the register kept by the train dispatcher, for the purpose of showing that the passenger train left Breckenridge at‘8:53 p. m., and arrived at Utica at 9:20 p. m:, and that the freight left Breckenridge at 8:55 p. m., and arrived at Utica at 9:35 p. m. This evidence the court rejected. As plaintiff’s right to recover was not dependent on the length of time she remained at Breckenridge, and as the facts sought to be proven by the register had been fully established by the evidence of the agent at Utica and the conductor of the freight train, the rejection of the evidence even if, in strictness, it was receivable, will not justify a reversal, it not appearing that defendant was prejudiced thereby.
II. The instructions given by the court are applicable to issues made in the pleadings, and are justified by the evidence. Mrs. Hicks, who was examined as a witness, testified that after purchasing her ticket at the office of
Defendant’s third instruction, which asked the court to tell the jury that plaintiff could not recover punitory, but ouly actual damages, was properly re- ^ ° x A , fused. “ when malice, violence, oppression or wanton recklessness mingle in the con-
troversy, vindictive damages may be allowed.” Kennedy v. North Mo. R. R. Co., 36 Mo. 364. The plaintiff, with two infant children, had intrusted herself to defendant to he carried to her destination. The conductor in violent, unbecoming and insulting language, threatened to eject her from the train, and sent a brakeman to execute the threat, who did execute it by taking one of the children and carrying it off, thus forcing her to follow with her remaining child. There was sufficient evidence to justify the court in not withdrawing from the jury the question of punitory damages.
The fourth instruction was properly refused under the authority of Dixon v. Hannibal & St. Jo. R. R. Co., 31 Mo. 410, and Wag. Stat, § 28, p. 9Q4
The sixth of defendant’s instructions was properly refused, because there was no evidence to support it, and for the reason hereinbefore given, sustaining the action of the court in not receiving evidence to show the regulation of the company in regard to the stoppage of trains at Utica. We have been cited to the case of Pittsburgh, &c., Ry. Co. v. Nuzum, 50 Ind. 141, as authority against the action of the court in giving plaintiff’s third, and refusing defendant’s sixth instruction. In that case the plaintiff had purchased a ticket from Union City to Sweetser, and the conductor of the train on which he was being carried having refused to stop at Sweetser and let him off, he sued for the injury. The answer of de
In the case before us no such issues are presented in the pleadings, and the questions arising in that case do not arise in this. Besides this, if it had been alleged in the answer of defendant that by its regulations, the train upon which Mrs. Hicks entered, did not stop at Utica, her uncontradicted evidence that she was induced to enter the train by defendant’s servants, would, under the principle announced in the case of Pittsburgh, &c., Ry. Co. v. Nuzum, supra, give her a right of action for any injury sustained by reason of the failure of defendant to stop at said station and let her off. Judgment affirmed,
Affirmed.