42 Minn. 158 | Minn. | 1889
In Blais v. Minn. & St. Louis Ry. Co., 34 Minn. 57, (24 N. W. Rep. 558,) this court announced that, save under exceptional and extraordinary circumstances, reasonable care and diligence did not require a railway company to remove the natural accumulations of snow and ice from its cattle-guards; and such rule must be accepted as the settled law of the state upon the subject. That case was carefully considered, as is manifest from the opinion, in which the reasons for the conclusion are clearly and forcibly stated, and we remain satisfied that it was decided correctly. No special circumstances were shown to exist in the case at bar which'should except it from an application of the established law. It was undis
As a new trial must follow, it is proper that we should consider some, other features of the ease. Plaintiff’s cattle were usually kept in his barn-yard, a few rods north of the railway crossing. On the day in question they had been permitted to go from the yard into an old and unfenced corn-field, from which they wandered to the highway, and thence — at the crossing — upon defendant’s track, along which they proceeded, until overtaken by its locomotive. The com
We are unable to discover from the testimony that any duty rested upon the defendant to remove from such part of plaintiff’s path or approach to the crossing as was within the limits of the public road the snow thrown there by men and ploughs engaged in clearing out the railway, and for that reason defendant’s ninth request should have been given to the jury. The plaintiff’s right to recover, upon the testimony now before us, turned, therefore, upon the question of the failure and neglect of defendant’s engineer to exercise due care and diligence to avoid injury to the cattle after he discovered them upor the track.
Order reversed.