Gulf, C. & S. F. Ry. Co. v. Locker

• Citation: 273 S.W. 831
• Decision Date: 27 June 1925
• Docket Number: (No. 709-4270.)
• Parties: GULF, C. & S. F. RY. CO. v. LOCKER.
• Court: Supreme Court of Texas

273 S.W. 831

GULF, C. & S. F. RY. CO. v. LOCKER.

(No. 709-4270.)

Commission of Appeals of Texas, Section A.

June 27, 1925.

Error to Court of Civil Appeals of Third Supreme Judicial District.

Action by H. M. Locker against the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fé Railway Company. Judgment for plaintiff was affirmed by the Court of Civil Appeals (264 S. W. 595), and defendant brings error. Reversed and remanded.

W. W. Hair, of Temple, Terry, Cavin & Mills, of Glaveston, and Lec, Lomax & Wren, of Fort Worth, for plaintiff in error.

Walker Saulsbury and Winbourn Pearce, both of Temple, for defendant in error.

CHAPMAN, J.

Defendant in error, Locker, was an employee of plaintiff in error, railway company, in the capacity of brakeman. While Locker and other members of the train crew were doing switching at McGregor, two freight cars of the railway company failed to couple on the first trial. The cars were being used in interstate traffic, and were loaded with steel rails. After the two cars had failed to couple, and, while they were about 12 feet apart, and neither of them moving, Locker went between them, as he claims, to adjust the couplers, and, after making such adjustment as he thought necessary, signaled the engineer to back the front car to the rear one for the purpose of making the coupling. The engineer obeyed the instructions, and Locker, while passing out from between the cars, was caught by a steel rail that was projecting from the end of one of the cars, and in the impact of the two cars received injuries for which he recovered $15,000 damages. The judgment of the trial court was affirmed by the Court of Civil Appeals at Austin. 264 S. W. 595.

The controlling issue in the trial court was as to whether the railway company violated the following provision of the federal Safety Appliance Law (27 Stat. 531):

"On and after the first day of January, eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, it shall be unlawful for any such common carrier to haul or permit to be hauled or used on its line any car used in moving interstate traffic not equipped with couplers coupling automatically by impact, and which can be uncoupled without the necessity of men going between the ends of the cars."

This issue was submitted to the jury by the following special issue:

"Do you find from a preponderance of the evidence that the cars which the plaintiff was attempting to couple had failed to couple automatically by impact?"

This exception was made to the special issue:

"Under the law, it is not a violation of the statute that the car may have failed on the one occasion claimed to have coupled automatically by impact, and there is no violation of the law unless the car in question, and being used by the defendant in the movement of interstate traffic, was not equipped with couplers coupling automatically by impact, and said issue does not submit the issue of failure to comply with the statute of the United States, if there be any testimony in this case that supports any such issue, which is denied."

The uncontradicted evidence was that the cars failed...