Hines v. Miniard

• Decision Date: 03 June 1920
• Docket Number: 6 Div. 51
• Citation: 86 So. 23,204 Ala. 514
• Parties: HINES, Director General of Railroads, v. MINIARD.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

86 So. 23

204 Ala. 514

HINES, Director General of Railroads, v. MINIARD.

6 Div. 51

Supreme Court of Alabama

June 3, 1920

Rehearing Denied June 30, 1920

Appeal from Circuit Court, Jefferson County; Romain Boyd, Judge.

Action by Mary Miniard against Walker D. Hines, as Director General of Railroads, operating the Illinois Central Railroad, for damages for injuries while a passenger. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Reversed and remanded.

Percy Benners & Burr, of Birmingham, for appellant.

Black &amp Harris, of Birmingham, for appellee.

SAYRE J.

This case was submitted to the jury on count 2 of the complaint which should appear in the report.

It will be observed that the gravamen of the charge against defendant is that its conductor, in the circumstances described, failed to take preventive action, and this is described as "gross and wanton negligence." The charge is intended to impute to defendant's conductor more than any degree of negligence, "which can never mean other than the omission of action without intent, existing or imputed, to commit wrong." It imputes to the conductor--and has been so properly treated by the parties throughout the progress of this cause--that recklessness, or wantonness, or worse, which implies a willingness to inflict injury, or a willfulness in pursuing a course of conduct which would naturally or probably result in injury, or an intent to perpetrate wrong. Ga. Pac. Rwy. Co. v. Lee, 92 Ala. 262, 9 So. 230.

The wrong of which plaintiff complains occured in the state of Illinois, where, it is gathered from the evidence, Jim Crow cars are prohibited and negro passengers on railroad trains are entitled to share accommodations with white passengers, without discrimination on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude--a state of law and fact for which, of course, the defendant in this case can in no wise be held answerable.

It appeared without dispute that the negro woman in question was insane, and that she was in the keeping of a negro man, who apologetically explained the situation to plaintiff, and exerted himself in some degree at least to control the conduct of his charge. Evidence for the plaintiff tended to show that the negro woman got on the train in Chicago, where plaintiff, about 8 o'clock in the evening, took passage with a ticket for Birmingham, and that at that time she was talking loudly and profanely. Defendant, on the other hand offered to show that the negro woman and her attendant were traveling on a ticket from Indianapolis to Jackson, Tenn., and that she boarded the train at Effingham, some 200 miles south of Chicago. Plaintiff, in company with her husband and an infant child, traveled in a chair car, in which there were a number of other passengers, white and black, and she testified that she was disturbed by the insane woman during the night, giving details of the woman's language and behavior, which must have been very distasteful to her. We do not, however, find any evidence in the record which would warrant the conclusion that plaintiff was at any time in danger of physical harm. At a point which defendant's witnesses tended to locate at about 30 minutes before the train reached Cairo, or Cairo Junction, a place on the border line between Illinois and Kentucky, and at an early hour in the morning, plaintiff sent the porter for the conductor, and to the latter complained of the insane woman's presence and behavior. The conductor, according to plaintiff's testimony, answered her complaint by saying, in effect, that he was "awfully sorry," that he was not the conductor who let the woman on the train, and that as soon as the train got to Mason and Dixon's Line he would put her in the Jim Crow car. The conductor's version of what passed between himself and plaintiff was that she told him that she was being disturbed by the crazy woman, and asked how far it was before the negroes would have to get out of that car; that he told her that Cairo Junction was the next stop, and that sh...