Brown v. Memphis & C.R. Co.

• Decision Date: 06 August 1880
• Citation: 4 F. 37
• Parties: BROWN v. MEMPHIS & C.R. CO.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Tennessee

4 F. 37

BROWN v. MEMPHIS & C.R. CO.

United States Circuit Court, W.D. Tennessee.

August 6, 1880

Inge &amp Chandler, for plaintiff.

Humes &amp Poston, for defendant.

HAMMOND D.J.

This is an action for wrongfully, and with unnecessary force ejecting the plaintiff from the defendant's cars, and has been heard upon demurrer to the pleas. The grounds of objection arising out of the form and substance of the pleas would be good, perhaps, if the pleadings were to be tested by the common law, but, under the Tennessee Code, they are not well taken. Any declaration which states a cause of action however informally, or any plea which states a defence either by general denial equivalent to the general issue, or special plea showing the facts, will be good, whether good at common law or not. Code, (T. & S. Ed.) 2884, 2913, 2917a; Car. Hist. Lawsuit, secs. 206, 209, 844.

The second plea, which avers that the plaintiff is a colored woman, and sets up a regulation requiring colored people to occupy separate cars equal to those provided for white people, has been withdrawn, because, as stated by counsel, this company has no such regulation, people of all colors being admitted to their cars without classification or distinction on account of color.

This leaves for present consideration only the question arising on the third plea, which is as follows: 'And, for a further plea in this behalf, defendant says that, by a customary regulation of the defendant, a certain car in the defendant's passenger train, commonly called the ladies' car, was set apart to be exclusively used and occupied by persons of good character, and genteel and modest deportment, from which said car it was, by said regulation, the duty of defendant's conductor to exclude all persons of improper character, or addicted to deportment offensive the modesty and decorum. Yet the plaintiff, at the time of her alleged grievance, being a notorious courtesan, addicted to lascivous and profane conversation and immodest deportment in public places, and well known to the defendant's conductor as such, and well knowing the regulation aforesaid, and well knowing that there were other good and comfortable passenger cars, of equal accomodations with the one provided for the ladies, in said train, whereon she could be safely and securely carried without violation of the regulation aforesaid, notwithstanding intruded herself into said ladies' car, and being then and there by the conductor advised of said regulation, and politely requested to remove into another good, safe, and comfortable car, of ample accommodations, in said train, peremptorily refused, and persisted in refusing, whereupon, with gentle hands and without unnecessary force, the conductor removed the plaintiff from the ladies' car, and tendered her accommodation in the said other car, which refusing, the plaintiff left the train,' etc.

The plaintiff alleges, in the declaration, that she had purchased of the agent of the defendant a first-class ticket form Corinth to Memphis, and took her seat in a car, from which with, as is alleged,...