123 Ga. 77 | Ga. | 1905
(After stating the facts.) That the employees of the defendant railroad company were guilty of acts of negligence is not controverted; it is insisted that such acts were not the proximate cause of the injury. What are the facts alleged bearing on this question ? Assuming, for the present, that the plaintiff was not guilty of contributory negligence, it appears, (1) that the negligence of the defendant’s train crew in approaching at a rapid rate the cars being operated by the section gang, notwithstanding
As was pertinently remarked by Lord Ellenborough in Jones v. Boyce, 1 Stark. 493, one who places a man “in such a situation that he must adopt a perilous alternative is responsible for
We áre by no means prepared to say, .however, that the precise injury sustained by the plaintiff in the present case was not one which might have been anticipated. The parallel track of the Southern Railway Company represented something more than a feature of the landscape at the point where the plaintiff was run over; the company was engaged in the serious business of transporting freight and passengers, and employed the customary means used in conducting such a business ; trains ran, and were to be expected to run on that railroad. Long since, this court called attention to the fact that the employees of a company so engaged were in a position to realize that trains might be run along the track at-any and all times; and in Southern Ry. Co. v. Webb, 116 Ga. 152, 157, Mr. Justice Cobb said: “If a railway company is bound to' anticipate and apprehend that one left in a helpless condition in a perilous place upon its tracks through its negligence may be injured by one of its own engines or trains running thereon, is it not equally bound to so anticipate and apprehend any injury which might result to such person from an engine of another- company which the first company knew had a right to and did actually use the tracks from time to time? It would indeed bring about a curious result if the defendant would be liable in such a case- only when the second engine or train was owned by it.” The result reached in that case was that the negligence of the defendant, which caused the plaintiff’s son to be thrown off a train onto' its track, where he lay insensible till a train of another company came along and ran over him, was the proximate cause of his death, the
The allegations of the petition do not show that the plaintiff voluntarily exposed himself to a known and obvious danger which was impending at the time he obeyed the order of the foreman to reverse the push and lever cars and propel them in the opposite direction from that in which they had been moving. The fair inference from the facts recited is, that the foreman and the men working under his direction pursued a safe course in so doing, acting upon the reasonable assumption that the crew of the freight-train would take all necessary steps to reduce the speed of the train. According to the allegations of the petition, the plaintiff would have committed a breach of his duty had he refused to obey this order of the foreman, and it was not until afterwards, when it became apparent that the trainmen were not checking the speed of the approaching train, that it was proper and necessary that the men in charge of the push and lever cars should abandon them to their fate and seek a place of safety for themselves. Nor, under the facts alleged, was the plaintiff chargeable with fault because he did not forsake his post of duty at the appropriate moment, but relied on the foreman to give him timely warning.
Judgment affirmed.