Union Stock Yards Company of Omaha v. Chicago, Burlington Quincy Railroad Company

• Decision Date: 09 January 1905
• Docket Number: No. 100,100
• Parties: UNION STOCK YARDS COMPANY OF OMAHA v. CHICAGO, BURLINGTON, & QUINCY RAILROAD COMPANY
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

196 U.S. 217

25 S.Ct. 226

49 L.Ed. 453

UNION STOCK YARDS COMPANY OF OMAHA

v CHICAGO, BURLINGTON, & QUINCY RAILROAD COMPANY.

No. 100.

Argued December 14, 15, 1904.

Decided January 9, 1905.

This case comes here on the certificate of the United States circuit court of appeals for the eighth circuit. The facts embodied therein are: The circuit court of the United States, sitting at Omaha, Neb., sustained a demurrer to the petition of the plaintiff in error against the defendant in error. The facts stated in the petition, in substance, are as follows:

'The plaintiff, the stock yards company, is a corporation which owns stock yards at South Omaha, Nebraska, railroad tracks appurtenant thereto, and motive power to operate cars for the purpose of switching them to their ultimate destinations in its yards from a transfer track which connects its tracks with the railways of the defendant, the Burlington company. The Burlington company, is a railroad corporation engaged in the business of a common carrier of freight and passengers. The defendant places the cars destined for points in the plaintiff's yards on the transfer track adjacent to the premises of the plaintiff, and the latter hauls them to their points of destination in its yards for a fixed compensation, which is paid to it by the defendant. The plaintiff receives no part of the charge to the shipper for the transportation of the cars, but the defendant contracts with the shipper to deliver the cars to their places of ultimate destination in the plaintiff's yards, and receives from the shipper the compensation therefor. The defendant delivered to the plaintiff upon the transfer track a refrigerator car of the Hammond Packing Company, used by the defendant to transport the meats of that company, to be delivered to that company by the plaintiff in its stock yards. This car was in bad order, in that the nut above the wheel upon the brake staff was not fastened to the staff, although it covered the top of the staff, and rested on the wheel as though it was fastened thereto, and this defect was discoverable upon reasonable inspection. The plaintiff undertook to deliver the car to the Hammond company, and sent Edward Goodwin, one of its servants, upon it for that purpose, who, by reason of this defect, was thrown from the car and injured while he was in the discharge of his duty. He sued the plaintiff, and recovered a judgment in one of the district courts of Nebraska for the damages which he sustained by his fall, on the ground that it was caused by the negligence of the stock yards company in the discharge of its duty of inspection to its employee. This judgment was subsequently affirmed by the supreme court of Nebraska (Union Stock-Yards Co. v. Goodwin, 57 Neb. 138, 77 N. W. 357), and was paid by the plaintiff.'

Upon this certificate the circuit court of appeals propounds the following question:

'Is a railroad company which delivers a car in bad order to a terminal company, that is under contract to deliver it to its ultimate destination on its premises for a fixed compensation, to be paid to it by the railroad company, liable to the terminal company for the damages which the latter has been compelled to pay to one of its employees on account of injuries he sustained while in the customary discharge of his duty of operating the car, by reason of the defect in it, in a case in which the defect is discoverable upon reasonable inspection?'

Mr. Frank T. Ransom for stock yards company.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 219-221 intentionally omitted] Mr. Charles J. Greene for railroad company.

Statement by Mr. Justice Day:

Mr. Justice Day delivered the opinion of the court:

We take it that this inquiry must be read in the light of the statement accompanying it. While instruction is asked broadly as to the liability of the railroad company to the terminal company, for damages which the latter has been compelled to pay to one of its own employees on account of injuries sustained, it is doubtless meant to limit the inquiry to cases wherein such recovery was had because of the established negligence of the terminal company in the performance of the specific duty stated, and which it owed to the employee. For it must be taken as settled that the terminal company was guilty of negligence after it received the car in question, in failing to perform the duty of inspection required of it as to its own employee. The case referred to in the certificate (Union Stock-Yards Co. v. Goodwin, 57 Neb. 138, 77 N. W. 357) is a final adjudication between the terminal company and the employee and it therein appears that the liability of the company was based upon the defective character of the brake, which defect a reasonably careful inspection by a competent inspector would have revealed, and it was held that in permitting the employee to use the car without discovering the defect the company was rendered liable to him for the damages sustained. We have, therefore, a case in which the question of the plaintiff's negligence has been established by a competent tribunal, and the inquiry here is, may the terminal company recover contribution, or, more strictly speaking, indemnity, from the railroad company because of the damages which it has been compelled to pay under the circumstances stated?

Nor is the question to be complicated by a decision of the liability of the railroad company to the employee of the terminal company, had the latter seen fit to bring the action against the railroad company alone, or against both companies jointly. There seems to be a diversity of holding upon the subject of the railroad company's liability under such circumstances, in courts of high authority.

In Moon v. Northern P. R. Co. 46 Minn. 106, 24 Am. St. Rep. 194, 48 N. W. 679, and Pennsylvania R. Co. v. Snyder, 55 Ohio St. 342, 60 Am. St. Rep. 700, 45 N. E. 559, it was held that a railroad company was liable to an employee of the receiving company who had been injured on the defective car while in the employ of the latter company when, under a traffic arrangement between the companies, the delivering company had undertaken to inspect the cars upon delivery, and, as in the Moon Case, where there was a joint inspection by the inspectors of both companies. This upon the theory that the negligence of the delivering company, when it was bound to inspect before delivery, was the primary cause of the injury, notwithstanding the receiving company was also guilty of an omission to inspect the car before permitting an employee to use the same.

A different view was taken in the case of Glynn v. Central R. Co. 175 Mass. 510, 78 Am. St. Rep. 507, 56 N. E. 698, in which the opinion was delivered by Mr. Justice Holmes, then chief justice of Massa- chusetts, in which it was held that, as the car, after coming into the hands of the receiving company, and before it had reached the place of the accident, had crossed a point at which it should have been...