Central of Georgia R. Co. v. Lester
Decision Date | 01 November 1968 |
Docket Number | 43769,43770. |
Citation | 118 Ga. App. 794,165 S.E.2d 587 |
Parties | CENTRAL OF GEORGIA RAILWAY COMPANY v. LESTER et al. DILLARD et al. v. LESTER et al. |
Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
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Shoob, McLain & Jessee, C. James Jessee, Jr., Fortson, Bentley & Griffin, Edwin Fortson, Erwin, Birchmore & Epting, Eugene A. Epting, for appellants.
Hudson & Stula, Jim Hudson, for appellees.
1. The plaintiff's action is predicated upon the defendant's alleged negligence with respect to the door's (a) defective condition and (b) defective design. The deposition and affidavits on file show no evidence that the particular door in question was in a defective condition. All of the statements concerning its condition amount to mere conjecture and opinion, since no one claimed to have observed the allegedly defective condition prior to the door's fall. It appears that this was a fresh boxcar of sand which had just arrived the night before the accident and had not been opened. Evidently the door was operating at least properly enough at the time it was loaded to get it closed. The fact that it resisted manual opening is not evidence of any defective condition, since this was caused by the loose sand around the bottom of the door — a condition which was apparently very common. Nor does the fact that such doors were frequently or even customarily opened in the manner employed at the time of the accident indicate that this particular door must have been defective. There must always be a first time for any occurrence. Apparently, the various factors involved — such as, the angle of the board, the amount and distribution of sand around the door, the degree of the impact against the door, for examples — here combined to derail the door, where they had not previously done so. There was testimony that the method employed was not that for which the door was designed and that it could and did cause it to fall off. The defendant was under no duty to redesign its doors to adapt them to a means of opening of which it did not approve and of which it may not even have had knowledge. Neither would it be required to notify each and every actual and potential opener of the doors of the proper method of opening stuck doors. Anyone using force to open such doors, rather than first consulting with the defendant's agents, to obtain either their permission or their assistance, must be considered as acting at his own peril.
The pleadings, together with the deposition and affidavits filed, exclude any negligence on the part of the defendant as the proximate cause of the plaintiff's injuries; therefore, the court erred in its judgment overruling the defendant's motion for summary judgment.
2. The cross appeal raises the question of whether or not the third-party complaint stated a claim against the third-party defendants. As this apparently is a case of first impression in our State courts, we shall quote from the case of O'Steen v. Lockheed Aircraft Corp., FSupp, N. Dist. Ga. (1968) (No. 11306), which decided substantially the same question against the third-party claimant.
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