Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company v. Lizzie Mims

• Decision Date: 15 January 1917
• Docket Number: No. 242,242
• Citation: 61 L.Ed. 476,242 U.S. 532,37 S.Ct. 188
• Parties: ATLANTIC COAST LINE RAILROAD COMPANY, Plff. in Err., v. LIZZIE M. MIMS, as Administratrix of the Estate of John J. Mims, Deceased
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

242 U.S. 532

37 S.Ct. 188

61 L.Ed. 476

ATLANTIC COAST LINE RAILROAD COMPANY, Plff. in Err.,

v LIZZIE M. MIMS, as Administratrix of the Estate of John J. Mims, Deceased.

No. 242.

Argued December 4, 1916.

Decided January 15, 1917.

Messrs. Frederic D. McKenney, P. A. Willcox, L. W. McLemore, and Douglas McKay for plaintiff in error.

Messrs. William S. Nelson, Jo-Berry Sloan Lyles, J. Team Gettys, and John H. Clifton for defendant in error.

Mr. Justice Clarke delivered the opinion of the court:

On December 10th, 1910, John J. Mims, a car inspector in the employ of the plaintiff in error, when attempting to cross a track to inspect a train of cars which had just arrived, was run down and killed by a switching engine at a public crossing in the city of Sumter, South Carolina.

In April following this suit was commenced by the filing of a complaint, which charges actionable negligence and alleges that the defendant owned and operated a line of railway described as wholly within the state of South Carolina. There is nothing in the complaint tending to state a cause of action under the Federal law. To this complaint the defendant filed an answer which is a specific denial under the South Carolina Code of Civil Procedure and which contains two separate defenses. The first defense admits that Mims was killed at the time alleged, admits the paragraph alleging that the defendant, at the time of the accident complained of, owned and operated the line of railroad described as being wholly within the state of South Carolina, and denies all the other allegations of the complaint. The second defense is one of contributory negligence.

Upon this complaint and answer the case went to trial, and when the testimony was all introduced the trial court granted a nonsuit, which was reversed by the supreme court of the state with an order remanding the case for a new trial.

When the case was called for the second trial the defendant asked leave to amend its answer by pleading 'gross and wilful contributory negligence' on the part of deceased, which was granted, and the trial proceeded until plaintiff rested her case.

Up to this time no claim had been made by defendant and no facts had been pleaded or evidence offered by either party from which it could be inferred that the deceased at the time of his death was engaged in interstate commerce, or that the Federal Employers' Liability Act was in any manner applicable to the case.

When the plaintiff rested her case on the second trial, the defendant for the first time offered to introduce testimony which it is claimed, if admitted, would have tended to prove that the train which the deceased was in the act of approaching to inspect when he was killed 'was engaged in interstate commerce and that the deceased was in this respect and otherwise engaged in interstate commerce.' The trial court rejected this proffer of testimony on the ground that it came too late and was not relevant to any issue tendered by the pleadings in the case. No application was made for leave to amend the answer by adding the claim under the Federal law.

The practice differs in the courts of the various states as to what testimony may be introduced under 'a specific denial,' such as was filed in this case, and the supreme court of South Carolina, while recognizing fully the ruling character of the Federal Employers' Liability Act when the facts making it applicable are properly pleaded, yet, upon full and obviously candid and competent consideration, decided, as we have seen, that, under the settled rules of pleading in that state, the evidence tendered was not admissible. The essential justice of this decision, which is the fundamental thing, commends it to our favor. The evidence admitted in the case shows that the train which the deceased was about to inspect when he was killed was a local freight train, with a run habitually, and on the morning of the accident complained of, wholly within the state of South Carolina. If the relation of the deceased to the traffic which this intrastate train carried was such as to give an interstate character to his service, that fact must have been known to the defendant from the day the accident occurred, and it could not possibly have been known to the plaintiff, and therefore surprise and delay certainly, and possibly defeat of plaintiff's claim under statutes of limitation, must have been the incvitable result of permitting the introduction of the proffered testimony late in the second trial, without the Federal right claimed from it having been 'specially set up and claimed' in the answer of the defendant.

The...