Campbell v. United Rys. Co. of St. Louis

• Citation: 147 S.W. 788
• Parties: CAMPBELL v. UNITED RYS. CO. OF ST. LOUIS.
• Decision Date: 29 March 1912
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Missouri

147 S.W. 788

CAMPBELL v. UNITED RYS. CO. OF ST. LOUIS.

Supreme Court of Missouri. Division No. 1.

March 29, 1912.

Rehearing Denied May 31, 1912.

1. ELECTRICITY (§ 16) —INJURIES TO TRAVELERS —CARE REQUIRED.

Where a street railway was operated by electricity conducted through uninsulated trolley wires suspended over a street, it was the duty of the company to use every precaution to keep the suspending wires, which might come into contact with pedestrians, free from contact with the inducting wires and in a safe condition; any neglect of such precautions, resulting in injury to another, constituting actionable negligence.

2. NEGLIGENCE (§ 1)—WHAT CONSTITUTES.

Negligence is failure to exercise the degree of care which prudence requires under the circumstances of each particular case.

3. ELECTRICITY (§ 19)—TROLLEY CONSTRUCTION —ESCAPE OF CURRENT—INJURY TO PEDESTRIANS —NEGLIGENCE.

Proof that an electric current which injured plaintiff while walking in a city street proceeded from a naked wire maintained by defendant in or on the line of the public highway, which wire at the time was connected, electrically, with the trolley wire, with the current from which defendant's cars were operated, constituted prima facie evidence of defendant's negligence, and plaintiff's injury having resulted therefrom, was sufficient to sustain a verdict for plaintiff in the absence of evidence tending to rebut such presumption.

4. ELECTRICITY (§ 16) — ESCAPE OF ELECTRICITY —INTERVENING CAUSE.

Where defendant railroad company negligently permitted the escape of electricity to and through a guy wire attached to a supporting post in a street, and from thence to a private wire attached to the guy wire by a third person, the fact that the private wire intervened and conducted the electricity, and caused the injury to plaintiff, who came into contact therewith while walking in the street, did not relieve defendant from liability for its own actionable negligence in permitting the electricity to escape.

5. DAMAGES (§ 132)—PERSONAL INJURIES.

Plaintiff, a boy 12 years of age at the time of his injury, was able to plow, drive horses, ride after hounds, and was as fully developed and healthy as any boy of his age. He was injured by a current of electricity passing through his body, from his hand to his foot. Its entry at his hand developed so much heat as to incinerate the flesh and destroy that member, and it departed from his body at his feet with similar evidence of heat disturbances. The trial took place 15 months after the injury, and it appeared that his growth had stopped, some of his teeth had fallen out, and the enamel and enveloping membrane of the roots had been destroyed. His gums had receded so that the roots of some of them were exposed. His ears were affected so that they gave him pain, the tissues of the drums had relaxed so that they became externally concave, and his speech was affected. He was also timid and nervous. Held, that a verdict allowing him $20,000 was excessive, and should be reduced to $10,000.

Appeal from Circuit Court, St. Charles County; J. D. Barnett, Judge.

Action by Clarence Campbell, Jr., by Clarence Campbell, next friend, against the United Railways Company. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Affirmed on condition.

This suit was instituted in the circuit court for St. Louis county November 15, 1907, and was thence removed to the circuit court for St. Charles county, where it was tried September 14-18, 1908. Its object is to obtain damages for personal injuries sustained by the infant plaintiff by coming in contact with an electric wire through the alleged negligence of the defendant. The plaintiff was at the time of the injury 12 years old. The defendant operated a line of electric railway extending from the western limits of the city of St. Louis to Greve Cœur Lake in St. Louis county, a distance of about thirteen miles. Electricity for the operation of its cars was transmitted in direct currents from its transforming stations at each end of the line by a system of overhead construction, consisting of feed and trolley wires suspended on poles. The direct transmission to the propelling motors of the car was from a trolley wire suspended as nearly as practicable over the center line of each of the two tracks of the double-track road. These wires were of copper 3/8 of an inch in diameter, and entirely naked, so as to admit of the continuous contact of the trolley attached to the car, and carried an electrical current of 550 volts of electromotive force.

At a point approximately in the middle of its line the road crosses, upon a curve convex to the north, a traveled highway known as the "Walton road." At this point the trolley wires were supported and held in position by the following construction: Two poles sunk in the ground opposite each other on either side of the road; the one on the outside of the curve being so planted as to lean slightly from the track. Opposite to the outside of this, and about four feet further away from the track, a post was sunk and firmly anchored in the ground, extending about three feet above its surface. A large wire called a "guy wire" was then wrapped around the pole near its top, stretched tightly, and wrapped around the top of the post, which was called a "guy post." The poles so secured were supposed to have the strength necessary to resist the tensile strain of the wire construction between them. A wire was then stretched between the tops of the two poles, and firmly fastened at each end by wrapping around them. This cross-wire seems to be known as a "span wire," and at a point above the center of each track its structure consists of a short sickle-shaped piece of metal with the opening beneath, the function of which is to suspend the trolley wire. The poles along the north side of the railroad are numbered consecutively, the one in the east side of the Walton road, where this accident occurred, being numbered 258. It seems to be practically conceded that this post stood within the limits of the road, in which, along the same side, at various distances from, but always near to the highway limit, ran a cinder path which answered the purposes of a sidewalk. North of the guy post which we have described, and extending from the Walton road east about 300 feet, was a tract of land about 20 feet wide. This was bounded on the south by the defendant's right of way, and on the north by the lot of Mr. George R. Hogg, which was fenced along the south side by a woven wire fence supported by cedar posts, and upon which Mr. Hogg resided. This strip had, years before, been dedicated as a public highway known as Midland Boulevard, but, as that portion of the street had been practically destroyed by a railway cut just east of the Hogg premises, its use had been abandoned, and Mr. Hogg determined to render it less unsightly by plowing it up and seeding it in grass, which he proceeded to do, and in April, 1907, for the purpose of keeping stray stock from the premises, he attached an ordinary wire clothes line to the defendant's guy wire near the top of the guy post, and stretched it to the corner of his own fence to which he fastened it, supporting the middle upon an ordinary broom stick. Whether this was in contact with the metal portion of Mr. Hogg's fence, or was only wrapped around the cedar post at the corner, does not clearly appear.

There is some evidence that another wire called the "pull-off wire" was attached to the pole standing in the Walton road, and extended thence to the trolley wire over the north track at some point between that pole and the next one to the west, for the purpose of pulling the trolley wire to a position over the center of the track at that point, but it is admitted that either this wire or the "span wire" was wrapped around the pole in contact with the upper end of the guy wire which was intended to keep the pole in position against a strain which had been sufficient to pull up the guy post with its anchor.

So far as above described, the situation was that the trolley wire charged with 550 volts of electric force was in perfect contact with a wire of equal, or at least of great, conductivity, wrapped around the top of the pole; that wrapped in contact with this was another wire called the "guy wire" which passed down to the post set in the ground, and in perfect contact with this was the Hogg wire which extended to Mr. Hogg's fence, so that if the Hogg wire should be grounded, or placed in contact with the moist earth, there would be a perfect metallic circuit from the power house of the defendant where the electricity was generated, through the Hogg wire, to the earth, which afforded the means of restoring the electrical equilibrium, so that the ordinarily innocent clothes line would have become an instrument of great danger. It appears in the evidence that the wooden members of this construction were of themselves nonconductors of electricity, while water, like the iron and copper of the wires, is a conductor; so that, when the wood becomes saturated with water, it becomes a conductor through the property of the water which fills its cellular structure. Water adhering to or running along the surface of the wood will also conduct the electric current. It also appears that the same phenomenon exists in case of the earth; so that a wire charged with an electric current of high tension, grounded by coming in contact with the saturated earth, will, with the heat developed at the point of contact, frequently dry the earth, and insulate itself by the condition it creates.

The testimony also shows that, to modify the obvious danger of such situations as we have described, the defendant used appliances called "circuit breakers," for the purpose of insulating, or electrically isolating, that portion of its system of wires which must necessarily remain charged from those wires which, like the guy wire and the Hogg wire, ought not...