Cleveland v. Johnson
Decision Date | 25 April 1893 |
Citation | 33 N.E. 1004,7 Ind.App. 441 |
Court | Indiana Appellate Court |
Parties | CLEVELAND, C., C. & ST. L. RY. CO. v. JOHNSON. |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from circuit court, Knox county; Geo. W. Shaw, Judge.
Action by William C. Johnson against the Cleveland, Cincinati, Chicago & St. Louis Railway Company to recover damages for personal injuries received while a passenger on defendant's train. From a judgment entered on the verdict of a jury in favor of plaintiff, defendant appeals. Affirmed.
John T. Dye, (Mason J. Niblack, of counsel,) for appellant. T. R. Cobb, Geo. G. Reily, and J. W. Emison, for appellee.
The appellee sued the appellant to recover damages for personal injuries received while a passenger on one of its passenger trains, which was derailed, and thrown down a high embankment. The jury returned a general verdict in favor of the appellee, assessing his damages at $1,500, and also returned answers to numerous interrogatories submitted by both parties. The complaint, after the formal allegations that the appellant was a common carrier of passengers, and that the appellee was a passenger on one of its passenger trains, consisting of an engine and baggage car, two passenger coaches, and a box car in which fruit was being transported, which ran off the track, and that the appellee was thereby thrown from his seat against the side and top of the car, greatly injuring him, contained specific allegations of the causes which occasioned the accident. The specific allegations are as follows:
The appellant assigns but one error in this court, namely: “The court erred in overruling appellant's motion for judgment in its favor upon the special findings of the jury notwithstanding the general verdict.” It is firmly and clearly settled-so much as to require no citation of authorities-that a general verdict is not controlled by answers to interrogatories unless such answers are irreconcilable with the general verdict. Where a fact is found, in answer to an interrogatory, which precludes a recovery at all, the fact so found controls the general verdict; but when the facts found are only such as to preclude a recovery upon one branch of a case, and no facts are found which would preclude a recovery upon another branch, it will be presumed that the jury based their verdict upon the branch upon which no facts were found inconsistent with such general verdict. The appellee averred, in his complaint, many things which caused the accident resulting in his injury. It was not necessary, in order to entitle him to recover, that he prove all the causes which brought about his injury. This leads to the inquiry, do the answers to the interrogatories preclude a recovery upon every branch? The answers to the interrogatories negative the allegations of the complaint as to the air brake, the construction of the fruit car, the grade of the track, and the speed of the train; hence the general verdict cannot stand upon either of these branches. It is clear, therefore, that the general verdict, if it can be sustained at all, must rest upon some other charge in the complaint. The remaining charges are.
The interrogatories propounded by the plaintiff, bearing upon these questions are as follows: ...
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