Hendrickson v. Great Northern Ry. Co.

• Decision Date: 07 April 1892
• Parties: HELEN HENDRICKSON <I>vs.</I> GREAT NORTHERN RY. CO.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

49 Minn. 245

HELEN HENDRICKSON vs. GREAT NORTHERN RY. CO.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Argued January 15, 1892.

Decided April 7, 1892.

Appeal by plaintiff, Helen Hendrickson, from an order of the District Court of Meeker County, Powers, J., made September 5, 1891, refusing her motion for a new trial.

Michael Hendrickson was killed about three o'clock in the afternoon of June 30, 1890, at King's Crossing, in Meeker County, on the Great Northern Railway. He was struck by the east coming passenger train while crossing the railway track with team and empty lumber wagon. The plaintiff is his widow. She was on December 17, 1890, appointed administratrix of his estate, and brought this action to recover $10,000 damages for the benefit of herself and his next of kin under 1878 G. S. ch. 77, § 2, as amended by Laws 1889, ch. 109. The negligence charged was failure to blow the whistle or ring the bell on approaching the crossing. The defendant by its answer claimed that the engineer blew the whistle and rang the bell, and that the negligence of the deceased in not listening and looking contributed to the collision. The trial was had June 9, 1891. After the evidence was all given, defendant requested the court to direct the jury to return a verdict for it, on the ground that upon the undisputed facts it appeared that deceased was chargeable with contributory negligence. The court granted the request, and so instructed the jury, and the plaintiff excepted, moved for a new trial, and being denied appealed.

Francis Bergstrom, F. D. Larrabee, and Shaw & Cray, for appellant.

M. D. Grover, E. A. Campbell, and S. L. Campbell, for respondent.

COLLINS, J.

In this action defendant corporation was charged with having so carelessly and negligently run and operated one of its trains when crossing a public highway as to have brought it in collision with plaintiff's intestate, thereby killing him instantly. The court below ordered and the jury returned a verdict for defendant upon all of the testimony, and plaintiff appeals from an order denying her motion for a new trial. The crossing, which seems to have been an exceedingly dangerous one, known as "King's Crossing," was about midway between the stations of Darwin and Dassel, some six miles apart, on defendant's line of road. The highway was the main traveled road between these places, and along the entire distance ran nearly parallel with the railway, crossing it at the scene of the accident. The deceased had resided for several years some eight miles from this crossing, about five miles from defendant's railway at the nearest point, and it was not made to appear that he knew anything of the specially dangerous character of the place, except as knowledge might be imputed to him from the fact that he had previously driven over the road, twice, according to the testimony of his widow, the plaintiff.

On this particular day he was driving easterly from Darwin to Dassel, having a pair of horses attached to an unloaded lumber wagon. The train, also going easterly, was a regular passenger, upon time, running thirty miles an hour, and due at the crossing about three o'clock P. M. Westerly of the crossing was a deep cut, over a thousand feet long, and, at places, more than twenty-five feet in depth. Beside it, on top of the bank and some forty feet from its edge, was the wagon road, and at various places between the road and the cut were piles of earth and bushes or small trees, which naturally obscured the vision of travelers upon the highway, and rendered it more difficult for them to observe a train approaching from the west. When within less than three hundred feet of the crossing, the wagon road entered upon a slight depression in the surface of the ground, and thence, through a small ravine, down hill, and, bearing northerly, to the railway tracks, which were crossed at an angle of about thirty-five degrees between the cut referred to and another on the east.

The limited opportunity for observing the coming of a train can best be judged by the testimony of the engineer, who, at his post upon the south or right-hand side of the cab, was looking out for the crossing. He saw the horses first, the moment they came in sight, and, an instant after, the wagon, in which Mr. Hendrickson was seated. In his opinion, the locomotive was not over one hundred and twenty feet from the crossing when the team emerged in view at a point on the wagon road not to exceed fifty feet from the rails.

From this testimony it is evident that Mr. Hendrickson, fully aware of the proximity of a railway crossing, as we must presume him to have been, could not have seen, without getting down from his wagon, and did not see, the locomotive before the moment his horses were discovered by the engineer, as before stated, and who instantly realized that they were uncomfortably close to the track over which the train must pass. By reason of the deep cut, the obstructions to the vision before mentioned, the confirmation of the ground over which the wagon road descended to within a few feet of the railway, and the angle of the crossing itself, the risk and hazard to wayfarers upon the road were largely augmented.

These facts and circumstances were peculiarly within the knowledge of defendant company, and the engineer in charge of the locomotive admitted, when testifying, that he knew it to be a dangerous crossing.

To sum up the situation, this junction of ways was of such a nature that a person driving on the public road came down a hill in a depression or ravine almost parallel with the track, to a point some fifty feet distant, before he could discover a train coming in his rear, and it would then be but about one hundred and twenty feet away. Running at the rate of the one in question, it would cover that distance (unless checked by the brakes) within three seconds. The imperative necessity for ample cautionary signals by the trainmen as they approached this place, the vigilance which ought to be exercised by the traveler upon the highway as he came to the track, and the exceedingly dangerous character of such an intersection, need not be enlarged upon.

There was a sharp conflict of testimony as to whether the whistle was sounded at the caution post eighty rods west of the crossing, or whether the bell was then rung, or rung at all until a collision with the wagon seemed imminent. The engineer and fireman, and other persons who were on the train, asserted with great positiveness...