Carlson v. Chicago & Northwestern Ry. Co.
| Decision Date | 22 December 1905 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 14,625-(130).,s. 14,625-(130). |
| Parties | ANDREW CARLSON v. CHICAGO & NORTHWESTERN RAILWAY COMPANY.<SMALL><SUP>1</SUP></SMALL> |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Action in the district court for Nicollet county by plaintiff as administrator of the estate of Erick Pehrson, deceased, to recover $1,980 for the death of decedent. The case was tried before Webber, J., who directed a verdict in favor of defendant. From an order denying a motion for a new trial, plaintiff appealed. Affirmed.
Davis & Olsen and A. A. Stone, for appellant.
Brown, Abbott & Somsen, for respondent.
This was an action brought to recover damages from the defendant for causing the death of Erick Pehrson by negligence.
According to the plaintiff the facts are as follows: On August 17, 1903, plaintiff's intestate was proceeding along a public street in the city of St. Peter, called Hartew street. He was driving in a jump-seat top buggy, hitched to a single horse. The horse was very gentle. The top on the buggy was up. The curtains of the top were down, but the one on the right-hand side, where deceased was sitting, was fastened only at the top. The front or jump-seat on the buggy was down, and the other seat in place over the same. He was accompanied by his daughter, thirteen years of age. On the right-hand side of the street was a cornfield, which obstructed entirely the view of the defendant's railroad track and right of way until the deceased arrived at a point fifty feet east of the center of the railroad track of the defendant. As the deceased approached the defendant's railroad track he was driving very slowly, and when he reached a point at the corner of the right-of-way fence, fifty feet east of the center of defendant's railway track, he pulled up his horse and looked and listened for trains. In order to do so, the deceased had to stand up in the buggy and put his head outside of the buggy top. He then proceeded very slowly forward and onto the railway track of defendant, when he was struck by one of defendant's locomotives and a train of cars and instantly killed. The train was running very fast, more than fifty miles an hour, and in violation of an ordinance of said city, which ordinance is admitted to have been in force by the pleadings. The train which caused the death of plaintiff's intestate was an "extra," and arrived at the said crossing about thirty minutes after the regular passenger had gone down in the morning. There was no other regular train on this railroad, either way, for about three hours later than the time this "extra" arrived. There was a whistling post about thirteen hundred feet north of the Hartew street crossing, and near the city limits on the north. This "extra" train, which caused the death of plaintiff's intestate, approached this crossing, passing said whistling post, without giving any signals by bell or whistle. At any point between the center of the railroad track and the east line of the right of way, fifty feet east, a train could have been seen for a distance of twenty-five hundred feet to the north of said crossing, where a sharp curve prevented seeing it any further. The railroad track ran almost north and south at the place where it intersected Hartew street, which runs east and west. The day was still, clear, and warm.
The court granted the motion of the defendant to direct a verdict on the ground that the plaintiff's decedent was guilty of contributory negligence, and subsequently denied the plaintiff's motion for a new trial.
The essential question in this case concerns the contributory negligence of plaintiff's intestate. The defendant insists that it has demonstrated to a mathematical certainty that, if the deceased had been traveling at from a mile and a half to three miles per hour, and if the train had been going upwards of one hundred miles per hour, and a fortiori if the train had been going at less speed, the engine would necessarily have been in plain sight of the plaintiff's decedent, if he had looked at the point his daughter says he did look. The photographs taken and introduced in evidence tend to sustain this contention. Counsel for plaintiff presented no clear refutation of the correctness of this calculation. Without, however, accepting it as unqualifiedly true, we are of the opinion that upon the record it conclusively appears that if the deceased had looked at this point he must have seen the moving train.
The principles of law applicable to this state of facts are definite and well settled. When the uncontradicted evidence conclusively shows that the colliding train must have been plainly visible from the point at which the testimony shows that the injured or killed person looked and listened for the train, the law conclusively presumes either that he did not look and listen, or that if he did look or listen, or both, he afterwards heedlessly disregarded the knowledge thus obtained and negligently went into an obvious danger. In neither view is the company operating the train responsible under ordinary circumstances for the damages consequent upon the collision, of which the person injured or killed was the proximate cause. Brown v. Milwaukee & St. P. Ry. Co., 22 Minn. 165, 167; Miller v. Truesdale, 56 Minn. 274, 57 N. W. 661; Weyl v. Chicago, M. & St. P. Ry. Co., 40 Minn. 350, 42 N. W. 24; Howe v. Minneapolis, St. P. & S. Ste. M. Ry. Co., 62 Minn. 78, 64 N. W. 102; Nelson v. St. Paul & D. R. Co., 76 Minn. 189, 193, 78 N. W. 1041, 79 N. W. 530; Schmidt v. Great Northern Ry. Co., 83 Minn. 105, 85 N. W. 935; Kemp v. Northern Pac. Ry. Co., 89 Minn. 139, 142, 94 N. W. 439; Chicago & N. W. Ry. Co. v. Andrews, 130 Fed. 65, 64 C. C. A. 399; Northern Pac. R. Co. v. Freeman, 174 U. S. 379, 19 Sup. Ct. 763; Wardner v. Great Northern Ry. Co., supra, page 382.
If that point be so far distant from the track as to enable the person injured or killed to know of the approaching train in due season to avoid the collision with it, he is guilty of contributory negligence as a matter of law and there is nothing for a jury to pass upon. Blount v. Grand Trunk Ry. Co., 61 Fed. 375, 9 C. C. A. 526; Straugh v. Detroit, 65 Mich. 706, 36 N. W. 161; Huggart v. Missouri, 134 Mo. 673, 36 S. W. 220; Stopp v. Fitchburg, 80 Hun, 178, 29 N. Y. Supp. 1008; Morris v. Lake Shore, 148 N. Y. 182, 42 N. E. 579; Marland v. Pittsburg, 123 Pa. St. 487, 16 Atl. 623; Butler v. Gettysburg, 126 Pa. St. 160, 19 Atl. 37.
The present case is obviously distinguishable from Hendrickson v. Great Northern Ry. Co. The environment and the cause of the accident in that case were essentially different. When Hendrickson emerged from a ravine at a point fifty feet from the railroad, the engine came in view in a cut about one...
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