79 Tenn. 116 | Tenn. | 1883
delivered tbe opinion of tbe court.
Action by Mason against tbe railroad company for damages in tbe killing of one borse and injuring two other borses by tbe negligence of tbe servants of tbe defendant as a common carrier, in transporting tbe borses from Louisville, Kentucky, to Milan, Tennessee. Tbe jury found a verdict in favor of tbe plaintiff for $175, and- tbe defendant appealed in error.
Tbe plaintiff gave bis own deposition and took the deposition of ' one Ramsey in support of tbe action. These depositions were taken in Grant county, Kentucky, and are somewhat loose and meagre. On tbe trial, tbe plaintiff rested upon bis own deposition, and Ramsey’s deposition was read by tbe defendant. No other testimony was introduced. The plaintiff in error now insists that tbe evidence shows that the plaintiff below and Ramsey were- joint owners of tbe borses for whose loss and injury tbe suit was brought, and that tbe verdict is otherwise unsupported by tbe proof. Tbe. testimony shows that two car loads of horses were shipped by tbe defendant’s road at Louisville, Kentucky, to Milan, on tbe same train, tbe plaintiff being in charge of one of these cars, and Ramsey of the other. Each car seems to have contained twenty horses. In tbe loose and inartificial way in wbitb tbe depositions are taken, both witnesses use language from which it might be inferred that they were joint owners of the stock. Tbe counsel of tbe plaintiff seems at first to have put that construction upon tbe language, for he
Both of the witnesses concur in testifying that the horses were injured in the transportation from Louisville to Milan. The plaintiff below deposes that one of them was so badly injured that he refused to receive it from the company. He added, and the statement was read without objection, that he understood the horse was dead. In the absence of any evidence, to the contrary, this was sufficient to warrant the jury in finding damages for the loss of one horse and for the injury to the others.
The only point of real difficulty in the case is raised by the charge of the court on the measure of damages. The plaintiff testified that the horse which was killed was a red roan, blaze-faced, one glass eye, about 15|- hands high, with no disease of any kind, sound as a dollar, going all the gaits well,
Upon this testimony if his Honor, the trial judge, directed the jury, as he probably did, the record not showing the entire charge, that they must find the value of the lost horse, and the damages of the other horses, at Milan at the time when they should have been delivered by the company to the plaintiff, the verdict would have been sustained by the evidence. For the plaintiff’s answer above, “ I could have sold the horse when I shipped for $175,” might well be considered as giving the market value at Milan, to which his attention was directed by the question.
His Honor, however, upon the supposition that.
The charge must be taken in connection with the fact that there was proof of the value of the horses in the market of the State of Mississippi. The true measure of damages was the value of the horses at the time and place where the defendant, as a common carrier, was bound to deliver the animals to the plaintiff. The horses were shipped at Louisville, but it does not appear positively to what point they were to be carried. It is fairly inferable that they were
The case before us falls within the principles settled by the decisions just cited. The evidence of the value of the horses in the Mississippi market was clearly competent, and, in the absence of any countervailing testimony, was sufficient to sustain the verdict: Muller v. Eno, 14 N. Y., 597. It is not a case of the total absence of any testimony of the value of the horses and of the damages sustained, but of positive testimony of such value and damages in a market for such animals in direct communication with, and in a few hours’ travel of, Milan. The jury were properly left to exercise their own judgment and apply their own knowledge and experience to the subject. They are not required to accept, as a matter of law, the conclusions of the witnesses instead of their own. “While they cannot,” to use the language of Mr. Justice Field in a recent opinion, “act in any case upon particular facts material to its disposition l’esting in their private knowledge, but should be governed by the evidence adduced, they may, and to act intelligently, they must, judge of the weight and force of that evidence by their own general knowledge of the subject of inquiry”: Head v. Hargrave, 105 U. S., 45. The rule was applied in that case to the ascertainment of the value of professional services, where, if ever, the testimony of
In the ca§e before us the witnesses give such a
The judgment must, therefore, be affirmed.