Georgia Ry. & Electric Co. v. Harris
| Citation | 57 S.E. 1076,1 Ga.App. 714 |
| Decision Date | 03 May 1907 |
| Docket Number | 282. |
| Parties | GEORGIA RY. & ELECTRIC CO. v. HARRIS. |
| Court | United States Court of Appeals (Georgia) |
Syllabus by the Court.
Where a plaintiff in a civil case supports his action solely by circumstantial evidence, before he is authorized to have a verdict in his favor the testimony must be such as to reasonably establish the theory relied upon, and to preponderate to that theory rather than to any other reasonable hypothesis.
(a) While in such cases the sufficiency of the evidence is for the jury, yet before there is, in legal contemplation, any evidence for their consideration, the circumstances shown must in some appreciable degree tend to establish the conclusion claimed.
(b) A mere scintilla of inconclusive circumstances, giving no "scope for legitimate reasoning by the jury," does not carry the burden of proof.
The declarations or admissions of an agent, unless part of the res gestae, do not bind the principal, and in a suit against the principal have no probative value. Conduct of an agent from which it is sought to imply an admission, is within this rule.
Ordinarily it is a rule of circumstantial proof that the facts from which the main fact is to be inferred must be proved by direct evidence. An inference resting only upon an inference is not permissible.
Error from Superior Court, Fulton County; Pendleton, Judge.
Action by one Harris against the Georgia Railway & Electric Company. Judgment for plaintiff. Defendant brings error. Reversed.
Rosser & Brandon, Walter T. Colquitt, and Ben. J. Conyers, for plaintiff in error.
Edgar Latham, for defendant in error.
Harris brought suit against the street railway company for damages on account of injuries alleged to have been inflicted by them upon his horse, and recovered a verdict. He attempted to substantiate his case only by the following proof: At about 11 o'clock one morning the horse escaped from the plaintiff's lot. At about 6 or 7 o'clock the next morning it was found standing under a tree, about 30 or 40 feet away from the track of the defendant's "river line," and the ground was pawed up around where it was standing. Its hip was broken, but there were no marks of external violence--no bruises on skin or flesh. The city inspector came, condemned it, and caused it to be killed. The plaintiff testified that between the rails of the car line he saw one horse track pointing in the direction of the place where the horse was found; but between this track and the place where the horse was standing there were no other signs. It had been raining very hard during the night. The horse was found outside the city limits, near Bellwood avenue and Elliott street. The car line runs down Bellwood avenue. The city inspector swore that the horse's leg was broken just below the hip joint. There were no exterior marks of violence or bruises of any kind on skin or flesh. The hair was not knocked off. The horse was skinned and quartered, and its leg examined. The thigh bone was broken about where the breeching usually strikes a horse. The only other evidence for the plaintiff consisted of proof of two circumstances, which we shall presently show were not, under legal rules, entitled to any probative value: (1) A witness living on Bellwood avenue detailed a set of circumstances from which it was reasonably inferable that, about 6 o'clock in the evening of the day before the horse was found, a street car stopped at a point on Bellwood avenue near where the horse was found, which was not a regular stopping place for these cars, though he did not see the car stop. (2) Another witness testified that early in the morning of the day the horse was found she saw a man in uniform coming from the direction where the horse was afterwards found. He got upon the front of a street car which had stopped in the street, and when he got aboard the car went on. The defendant produced all of its motormen who had run cars on the "river line" between the hours in question, and each of them testified that his car did not strike any horse and did not stop that night away from the regular stopping places on Bellwood avenue. However, to make the point in the decision clearer, let it be conceded that this testimony, being in some respects contradicted, is to be given no weight in this court, and let our judgment rest on the plaintiff's proof as being the uncontradicted truth. There was evidence of value and ownership, and the case turns solely upon the question whether one of the defendant's street cars struck the horse; for, if it did, the statutory presumption of negligence supplied the other element precedent to liability.
1. The legal apothegm, "whether there be any evidence is a question for the judges, whether sufficient evidence is a question for the jury," is not of American origin, but is the sententious form in which Buller, J., announced the common-law rule in the Court of King's Bench (Mansfield Willes, and Ashurst presiding, also) in the case of Company of Carpenters v. Hayward, 1 Doug. 375. The applicability of this rule to cases resting upon direct evidence presents no difficulty; but, when the establishment of a cause of action or of a defense rests upon circumstantial evidence, the determination of what is "any evidence" is not always easy. In this class of cases, no less than in others, is the rule applicable; and the court must decide whether there is any evidence, the jury whether there is sufficient evidence. In cases of circumstantial evidence a mere inconclusive inference, or, as the English courts express it, a mere scintilla, is not to be regarded as any evidence, so as to require the submission of its sufficiency to the jury. This seems to be generally recognized, with only rare exceptions (such as the emphatic dissent of Bynum, J., in Wittkowsky v. Wasson, 71 N.C. 458), both in English and American decisions. Jewell v. Parr (C. B.) 76 E. C. L. R. 909; Toomey v Railway Co. (C. B.) 91 E. C. L. R. 146; Wheelton v Hardisty (Q. B.) 92 E. C. L. R. 267; Ryder v. Wombwell, 4 L. R. Exch. 32; Bright v. Eynon, 1 Burrowes, 393; Wittkowsky v. Wasson, 71 N.C. 451; Manning v. Ins. Co., 100 U.S. 694 (2), 25 L.Ed. 761; Chandler v. Von Roeder, 65 U.S. 224, 16 L.Ed. 633; Ruppert v. Railway Co., 154 N.Y. 90 (2), 47 N.E. 971; Hall v. Page, 4 Ga. 438, 48 Am.Dec. 235; Smith v. C. R. Co., 82 Ga. 807, 10 S.E. 111; Hankerson v. Southwestern R. Co., 59 Ga. 593; So. Ry. Co. v. McMillan, 101 Ga. 116, 28 S.E. 599; Inman v. Elberton R. Co., 90 Ga. 665, 16 S.E. 958, 35 Am.St.Rep. 232; Georgia R. Co. v. Roberts, 114 Ga. 388, 40 S.E. 264. Judge Bleckley, in Hankerson v. Southwestern Railroad Company, 59 Ga. 593, uses the...
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