Commerce Cotton Oil Co. v. Camp

• Decision Date: 10 April 1912
• Parties: COMMERCE COTTON OIL CO. v. CAMP.
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

Page 902

145 S.W. 902

COMMERCE COTTON OIL CO. v. CAMP.

Supreme Court of Texas.

April 10, 1912.

Error to Court of Civil Appeals, Fifth Supreme Judicial District.

Action by Mrs. Cora Camp against the Commerce Cotton Oil Company. From a judgment of the Court of Civil Appeals for the Fifth District (129 S. W. 852), affirming judgment for plaintiff, defendant brings error. Reversed and rendered.

Harry P. Lawther, of Dallas, and Looney & Clark, of Greenville, for plaintiff in error. John A. Stone, Wm. Pierson, and T. D. Starnes, all of Greenville, for defendant in error.

BROWN, C. J.

Mrs. Cora Camp instituted suit in the district court of Hunt county against the Commerce Cotton Oil Company, a corporation, seeking to recover damages for the death of her minor son, caused by the negligence of the Oil Company. She recovered a judgment, which was affirmed by the Court of Civil Appeals for the Fifth District. We copy the conclusions of fact found by the Court of Civil Appeals:

"Oscar Camp, while employed by appellant to shovel hulls in its hull house, met his death by being smothered in the hulls on the morning of December 15, 1906. He was last seen alive between 3 and 4 o'clock Saturday morning in appellant's engine room, where he had gone to get a drink of water. The hull house is 100 feet long and 60 feet wide, and has two rows of posts its entire length; the posts being 20 feet apart. On top of each row is a girder, running from one end of the building to the other, dividing the house into three sections. The hulls are conveyed from the mill to the hull house by a conveyor, running the entire length of the building; and every 20 feet there is a chute or spout through which the hulls are discharged. The girders are about 6 feet from the roof, and these chutes are a little above the level of the girders. The roof is 26 feet high at its highest point and slopes down to the eaves, which are 16 feet high. The hull house, speaking generally, stood north and south, and had large double doors at its front or south end, near the oil mill, through which people backed in their wagons in hauling away hulls. The first chute was 20 feet from the doors and the hulls had worked out until they came outside 10 feet on an incline. The house was practically full of hulls at the time of the death of Oscar Camp. During the day, people would haul away hulls; but during the night the house would again be filled. The work of shoveling hulls was dangerous. If a person in shoveling hulls got out of the beaten path, he would sink; and, again, if the banks were perpendicular, or nearly so, the hulls were liable to slough off in large piles or chunks. Oscar Camp was not warned of, and did not know or appreciate, the danger at the time of his employment, or at the time of his death. The appellee is the only living parent of Oscar Camp, his father having died prior to his employment by appellant; and, while appellee knew that her son Oscar was in the appellant's employ, she did not know the character of his employment, or that he was employed in a dangerous occupation, or employed to shovel hulls. The appellant was negligent in employing Oscar Camp, a minor 15 years of age, and putting him at work at a dangerous employment, without warning him of the danger; and his death was the proximate result of such negligence. Neither Oscar Camp nor appellee were guilty of contributory negligence. The hull house was lighted by two incandescent lights which went out as soon as the machinery stopped running.

"On the night of the death of Oscar Camp, the spout nearest the front of the building was being used. He was found in the forenoon of Sunday, buried in the hulls between the first chute and the front of the building. The evidence was sufficient to justify a finding; and we find that he was buried by a quantity of hulls breaking or sloughing off, by which he was submerged and suffocated."

From the above conclusions of fact, and, indeed, the entire record, it is manifest that the trial court and the Court of Civil Appeals ignored the distinction between an action to recover damages for death, caused by the negligence of a private corporation, and an action for damages from injuries to the person, in which case the rules of the common law would be applicable. But the corporation can be held liable only under the following article of the Revised Statutes: "Art. 3017. An action for actual...