Huff v. Illinois Cent. R. Co.
| Citation | 362 Ill. 95,199 N.E. 116 |
| Decision Date | 16 December 1935 |
| Docket Number | No. 23092.,23092. |
| Parties | HUFF v. ILLINOIS CENT. R. CO. |
| Court | Supreme Court of Illinois |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Suit by Alexander Huff against the Illinois Central Railroad Company. Judgment for plaintiff was reversed by the Appellate Court without remandment (279 Ill.App. 323), and plaintiff appeals.
Judgment of the Appellate Court affirmed.Appeal from Appellate Court, Fourth District, on Appeal from Circuit Court, St. Clair County; Maurice V. Joyce, Judge.
Beasley & Zulley, of East St. Louis, for appellant.
Kramer, Campbell, Costello & Wiechert, of East St. Louis (V. W. Foster, of Chicago, Charles A. Helsell, of Fort Dodge, Iowa, and Norman J. Gundlach, of East St. Louis, of counsel), for appellee.
The appellant, Alexander Huff (who will hereinafter be referred to as the plaintiff), started suit in the circuit court of St. Clair county against the Illinois Central Railroad Company (herein referred to as the defendant), in which he sought damages for personal injury, basing his right to a recovery on certain alleged acts of negligence under the Federal Employers' Liability Act, 45 U.S.C.A. §§ 51-59. The action was in case and the declaration consisted of two counts. The first count alleged the injury to have been caused by a negligent failure on the part of the defendant to furnish sufficient help to do the work then being performed. The work was the removal of a drawbar. The negligence alleged in the second count was that the defendant furnished the plaintiff with a defective, worn, and broken jack for the purpose of lifting the drawbar, and that the defective condition was known to the defendant, or could have been known to it by the exercise of reasonable care. Trial was had upon a plea of the general issue and resulted in a verdict of $8,000 for the plaintiff. On motion for a new trial the trial court required a remittitur of $30,000, overruled the motions for a new trial and in arrest of judgment, and entered judgment against the defendant for $5,000. The defendant took the case to the Appellate Court for the Fourth District, where a final judgment (279 Ill.App. 323) was entered reversing the judgment of the circuit court without remandment. The cause is here for further consideration on leave to appeal granted by this court.
To sustain the issues as to negligence the plaintiff offered only his own testimony. He testified that for about twelve years prior to April 12, 1933, he had worked continuously for the Illinois Central Railroad Company. He was a car repairer, and on the morning of the date mentioned was told by Steger, his foreman, to replace the drawbars on a certain box car; that he said to the foreman, ‘Mr. Steger, there are two drawbars on this car to come out; will you give me somebody to take them out?’ That Steger said: And that he then proceeded to go to work on one of the drawbars. The witness explained the manner in which a drawbar fits into a car between two center sills and how it is held in place by tie straps. He testified that in taking a drawbar down it is necessary to first cut the nuts off the bolts or cut the tie straps off with an acetylene torch; that a drawbar weighs from 350 to 400 pounds; and that a jack has to be used to sustain the weight while it is being removed. He said that on the morning of the alleged accident he was using a fifteenton jack that he got from the jack house; that the jack is about two feet high when the plunger is down and operates by a lever with a handle on it; and that the up-and-down motion of the jack is controlled by triggers actuated by springs. The witness testified that he had nothing to do with keeping the jacks in repair; that there was either a custom or an order at the yard in question by which it was required that a yellow chalk-mark be placed on any jack found to be defective; and that there was no such mark on the jack he was using that morning. It was his testimony that he put the jack under the drawbar, raised it up and removed its fastenings; that after he had cut the bolts he found that the coupler was jammed or hung in by some broken spring, or for some other reason it would not come down readily; that he partly released the jack to find out whether or not the coupler was coming on down; that he shook the coupler to let it loose and released the trigger on the jack once and it came down a notch, the coupler coming with it; that he then put his foot on the jack to release it another notch, whereupon the jack came down but the coupler did not; and that he then shook the coupler to lower it. In his own words, on cross-examination: It was his further testimony that the strain thus caused him brought about the physical condition of which he complained. Except for the testimony of one physician the plaintiff offered no further evidence.
The court overruled a motion for a directed verdict for the defendant, and the defendant thereupon introduced substantial evidence tending to show that the plaintiff made no report or complaint of the accident at the time in question but did seek hospitalization on account of a hernia incurred some two years previously. This evidence need not be reviewed, however, since upon this hearing we are concerned only with the evidence most favorable to the plaintiffand for the purposes of this review are assuming it to be true. Libby, McNeill & Libby v. Cook, 222 Ill. 206, 78 N.E. 599;Pollard v. Broadway Central Hotel Corporation, 353 Ill. 312, 187 N.E. 487. Under the authorities we are limited to a determination of the one point of whether or not the plaintiff's evidence taken as true, with all intendments therefrom most favorable to him, is sufficient to establish the negligence charged by him in either count of his declaration.
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