54 Ga. App. 783 | Ga. Ct. App. | 1936
Mrs. Pauline Godwin- Ellis brought suit against' the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company and the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company, joint lessees of the Georgia Railroad and Banking Company, operating under the name of the Georgia Railroad, the Milledgeville Railway Company, and the Atlantic Ice and Coal Company, for damages on account of personal injuries sustained by her. In her petition she made substantially this case: plaintiff, operating her automobile, was approaching from the west along a public street in the City of Milledgeville, toward a point in such street where it was intersected by the tracks of the railroad companies and another public street in said city which ran north and south, said railroad tracks being
The rights of a railroad to lay tracks in a public street and to use them are mutual with the general public, and as a general rule the right to use the street is on terms equal with, and subject to, the general public’s rights to occupy and use the same; and the rights of each therein must be exercised with due regard to the
A defendant may be held liable where it appears that his negligence was the sole cause of the injury complained of, or that his negligence put in operation other causal forces which were the direct, natural, and probable consequences of the defendant’s original act, or that the intervening agency could reasonably have been foreseen by the defendant as original wrong-doer. Georgia Power Co. v. Kinard, 47 Ga. App. 483 (170 S. E. 688). Where two concurrent causes naturally operate in causing an injury, there may be a recovery against both or either of the actors, even though the care owed by them to the injured person be different. McGinnis v. Shaw, 46 Ga. App. 248 (167 S. E. 533). Where a wrongful act puts other forces in operation, resulting in injury to another, which the jury may be authorized to find were the direct, natural, and probable consequences of the original act or acts, the wrongdoer can be held liable; but where the resultant injuries could not reasonably be foreseen as the natural, reasonable, and probable consequences, there can be no recovery. Hardwick v. Figgers, 26 Ga. App. 494 (106 S. E. 738). It is to be remembered that all persons are presumed by the law to anticipate or foresee the reasonable and natural consequences of their conduct. Terrell v. Giddings, 28 Ga. App. 697 (112 S. E. 914). In a negligence case
Even though the act of the trainman in beckoning and signaling to plaintiff to proceed can be said to have been without the expressed or implied assent of the railroads, and they had limited his duties to attending to the train, and at crossings his duty did not extend beyond seeing that his train does not injure any one at the crossing, the railroad companies would be responsible for the wrongful act of the trainman, if committed in the prosecution of his business with the railroads, and if as a result thereof the plaintiff was injured. Code, § 105-108; Planters Cotton-Oil Co. v. Baker, 181 Ga. 161 (181 S. E. 671).
Applying these principles to the facts appearing in the petition and admitted on general demurrer, a cause of action against the railroad companies was alleged. Without the act of the trainman in beckoning to the plaintiff to proceed across the intersection, after she had come to a stop on seeing the train at the crossing, the collision between plaintiff’s car and the truck of the Atlantic Ice and Coal Company would not have occurred. It is true that had not said truck been approaching the intersection from the south at a speed in violation of the law the plaintiff could have proceeded safely across the intersection; but it is to be remembered that this truck was on the side of the train of box-cars opposite to the plaintiff; and it is likewise true that she relied on the trainman’s motion and signal to proceed forward. While a trainman is not a traffic officer, and ordinarily.the extent of his duty does not include the regulation of traffic at street and railroad crossings, other than
Judgment affirmed.