Illinois Cent. R. Co. v. Meacham

• Decision Date: 01 April 1892
• Parties: ILLINOIS CENT. R. CO. v. MEACHAM.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

19 S.W. 232

ILLINOIS CENT. R. CO. v. MEACHAM.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

April Term, 1892.

Error to circuit court, Weakley county; W. H. SWIGGART, Judge.

Action by James M. Meacham against the Illinois Central Railroad Company to recover for personal injuries. From a judgment on a verdict for plaintiff, defendant brings error. Reversed.

Joseph E. Jones, for plaintiff in error. Chas. M. Ewing, for defendant in error.

LEA, J.

This action was brought in the circuit court of Weakley county by James M. Meacham to recover damages alleged to have been sustained by him as the result of an injury inflicted on him by reason of a collision of two trains. It is alleged that the injury inflicted was caused by the carelessness and neglect of the employes, agents, and servants of the rail-road company in charge of and operating said train. The train upon which defendant in error was riding, and in jumping from which he was injured, was a timber train upon which no persons were allowed to be carried except the employes of the train, the timber contractor, and his hands engaged in loading the cars. There is no pretense that defendant in error was either. He was not on the train by invitation of any who had authority to invite him, nor did he pay any fare. The court, among other things, charged: "If you find that the plaintiff was a trespasser on defendant's train, engaged in taking of timber and going from McConnell to Martin, and while said train was making said trip, on the defendant's line of road, a collision occurred between said train going south and another train of defendant's going north, and which was moved and operated by the servants of the defendant, and a wreck was thereby caused, and that said collision was the direct or proximate result and consequence of the negligence, carelessness, or recklessness of the defendant's servants engaged in moving and operating said trains, or either one of them, and that the plaintiff was compelled to jump from said train to the ground just before said collision occurred, and that he received the injury as charged in the several counts in the declaration, by reason of said jumping from said train under such circumstances, and that the plaintiff himself was acting in a prudent and cautious manner while so on said train, so far as his safety was concerned, and that he was not guilty of any other fault or negligence tending to contribute to the injury, except the mere fact that he was on the train without any right...