Brewer v. Flint & P.M. Ry. Co.
Decision Date | 13 May 1885 |
Citation | 23 N.W. 440,56 Mich. 620 |
Parties | BREWER v. FLINT & P.M. RY. CO. |
Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
Error to Wayne.
Griffin Dickinson, Thurber & Hosmer, for plaintiff and appellant.
Wm. L Webber, for defendant.
Action to recover damages for personal injury caused by defendant's negligence. The declaration avers that on the nineteenth day of December, 1881, and for a long time prior thereto, the defendant owned, maintained, and operated a railroad, with accompanying locomotives, engines, and cars and employed the plaintiff as a brakeman and car-coupler upon its cars used by it in and about operating its road, and thereupon it became and was the duty of defendant at all times to use due and reasonable care in providing for use by plaintiff, upon its said road, properly constructed cars, and at all times to use reasonable care and diligence in keeping the same in a good, safe, and proper condition of repair, so that the same might be in a condition reasonably safe to the life and limb of the brakemen and car-couplers when employed in and about them in the course of their employment; that on the day and year last aforesaid, the defendant, disregarding its said duty, willfully and negligently caused to be used upon its road, and upon a freight train upon which plaintiff was employed as a brakeman and car-coupler as aforesaid, a certain car commonly called a caboose, then and for a long time prior thereto in a condition wholly unsafe and out of repair, in this, that the spring supporting the draw-bar on the end of said caboose had become and was weak, and insufficient to support the same, by reason whereof said draw-bar had fallen below its usual and proper place upon the end of said caboose, which condition of said caboose, on the day and year aforesaid, and for a long time prior thereto said defendant well knew, or by the use of reasonable care might have known; that on the day and year last aforesaid, at New Boston, a station on the said road, while the plaintiff in the discharge of his duties as a brakeman and car-coupler upon said freight train, was attempting to couple said caboose to a car upon the end of said train, backing down to said caboose for that purpose, without fault on the part of said plaintiff, and when he was exercising due care and ignorant of the condition of said caboose, by reason of the draw-bar on the end of said caboose being out of place and lower than usual, the draw-bar on the end of the car on the end of said train passed over the draw-bar on said caboose, bringing said car and said caboose together with great force and violence, and catching the plaintiff and so crushing and bruising the right arm of said plaintiff that the same had to be cut off, and otherwise permanently wounding and injuring him.
On the trial the plaintiff testified on his own behalf that he was 40 years of age; that he entered the service of defendant as a brakeman in November, 1881; that When plaintiff next saw the caboose car, some eight or nine weeks after his injury, it had not been repaired. The cause of the accident, he thought, was from one end being lower than the other from weakness of the springs. When in proper repair and good condition, cars come squarely against each other on the same line. The cars of the defendant should come together even. Plaintiff had always found them to do so. In the ordinary business of the company there are cars on the track so...
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