Anderson v. Wapello Coal Co.
| Decision Date | 09 June 1911 |
| Citation | 131 N.W. 684,151 Iowa 479 |
| Parties | ERNEST ANDERSON, Appellant, v. WAPELLO COAL COMPANY, Appellee |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Appeal from Monroe District Court.--HON. C. W. VERMILION, Judge.
ACTION at law to recover damages for personal injury. There was a directed verdict and judgment for defendant, and plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.
Affirmed.
John T Clarkson and John R. Price, for appellant.
Mabry & Hickenlooper, for appellee.
The plaintiff was employed by the defendant as a mule driver in the entries of its coal mine. While hauling a loaded car from the face of the coal in the direction of the hoisting shaft the mule ran away, and, on reaching a point where the track turned at or near a right angle into another entry, the car left the track striking the rib or wall of the passage and crushing and severely injuring plaintiff. The petition charges the defendant with negligence causing such injury First, in furnishing the plaintiff with a mule known to the defendant to be vicious and addicted to the habit of running away; and, second, in allowing the sides of the passage through which the track was laid to become so filled and incumbered with piles of slate and other material that plaintiff was unable to leave the car when the mule became unmanageable, and thereby avoid injury; for such reason said passage was not a reasonably safe place to work.
In argument in this court the plaintiff abandons the first specification of negligence as not being sustained by the evidence and relies solely upon the second ground above stated. The trial court appears to have directed a verdict on the theory that if the negligence charged has any support in the evidence it does not appear to have been the proximate cause of the injury complained of. We are constrained to hold the ruling correct. While it appears that the entry through which plaintiff drove his mule was more or less obstructed on either side of the track with accumulations of rubbish, the connection between such condition and plaintiff's injury as a matter of cause and effect does not appear from the evidence. The passage down which the mule ran was some three hundred feet in length and eight feet in width. The car trucks were three feet wide and were overhung by the somewhat wider car body, leaving a clear space of only about two feet on either side to the rib of the entry. Plaintiff was "riding the trip" in the usual manner, standing with his left foot on the bumper and left hand on the load, while his right foot was on the "tail chain" and his right hand rested on the mule's rump. In this position and bending low to avoid contact with the roof of the entry and without means to check or guide the animal's pace, it is obvious that he could do little if anything more than to avoid being thrown under the car wheels. It is open to very great doubt whether had the entry been entirely free from obstructions plaintiff could have jumped or thrown himself into the narrow space between the swiftly moving car and the wall without serious injury. It further appears from the evidence that when the unmanageable mule reached the main entry where the track made a turn to the east he turned to the west, and the...
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