Illinois Cent. R. Co. v. Lucas

• Decision Date: 21 January 1907
• Docket Number: 12343
• Citation: Illinois Cent. R. Co. v. Lucas, 42 So. 607, 89 Miss. 411 (Miss. 1907)
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD COMPANY v. LULU LUCAS

42 So. 607

89 Miss. 411

ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD COMPANY v. LULU LUCAS

No. 12343

Supreme Court of Mississippi

January 21, 1907

FROM the circuit court of Attala county, HON. J. T. DUNN, Judge.

Mrs Lucas, the appellee, was the plaintiff in the court below the railroad company, the appellant, was defendant there. From a judgment in favor of plaintiff the railroad company appealed to the supreme court.

The appellee's suit was for damages for personal injuries sustained by her while upon the depot premises of the appellant railroad company in Kosciusko. The proof showed that she had leased to the B. E. Wallace Show Company a tract of land owned by her, and adjacent to the railroad company's depot premises, for exhibition purposes. On the morning the circus reached Kosciusko over the railroad of the appellant railroad company, and while it was being unloaded at the depot, Mrs. Lucas, the appellee, went to the depot to see the business manager of the show company, at his request in regard to matters pertaining to the lease. To avoid the confusion resultant from the numerous busy employes of the show company and the many spectators around the depot, she was instructed by one of the employes of the show company who at the time was directing the unloading of the circus, to proceed to the freight platform adjacent to the depot, where the business manager was expecting to meet her. While upon this freight platform awaiting the manager's coming, and while she was watching the unloading of the circus cars, she was injured by one of the circus wagons as it was unloaded. There was no proof that the appellee was upon the appellant railroad company's platform on the invitation or with the knowledge of any agent or employe of the railroad company, or that she had any business to transact with the railroad company, or that the employes assisting in unloading the circus wagon at the time of injury were employes of the appellant railroad company. It was contended by the appellee that as the railroad company, under its contract of transportation with the show company, hauled the circus cars of the show company, and allowed the show company to use its switch tracks and depot premises for loading and unloading its circus effects, and as appellee was at the time upon the premises of the railroad company when injured, the appellant was liable. The theory of the appellant company was that appellee was a mere licensee, and that appellant owed her no other duty than to refrain from doing her a willful or malicious injury, and on this ground the appellant asked a peremptory instruction, which was refused. The jury returned a verdict for the amount sued for, $ 1,999, and the railroad company appealed.

Case reversed and remanded.

Mayes & Longstreet, and J. M. Dickinson, for appellant.

It is somewhat difficult to conceive of the principle according to which it is hoped to impose on the railroad company responsibility, under the evidence in this case, for the alleged negligent acts of the circus people. It must be that the theory of possible liability is based on some strained construction of the rule announced in such cases as Indermaur v. Danes, L. R. 1 C. P., 274, and L. R. 2 C. P., 313; Bennett v R. R. Co., 102 U.S. 577, and many other like cases where the proposition is asserted that a person who visits premises upon business which concerns the occupier, and upon his invitation, express or implied, is entitled to have reasonable care exercised to prevent injury to him, he using reasonable care for his own safety.

But if this is the theory, the contention that such a principle applies is untenable, and is not justified by an understanding of the principle advanced and of the many cases in which it has been enunciated.

The leading cases wherein this proposition has been enunciated so far as we have examined them, are Plummer v. Dill., 32 Am. St. Rep., 463; Hart v. Cole, 156 Mass. 475; Indemaur v. Danes, 1 L. R., C. P., 274; O'Connor v. I. C. R. R. Co., 44 La. (Ann.), 339 (this is referred to often as a leading case); 77 Mo. 535; Bennett v. R. R. Co., 102 U.S. 577; R. R. Co. v. Ferguson, 38 Am. St. Rep., 217 (57 Ark. 16); Beach on Contributory Negligence, sec. 51; 2 Jaggard on Torts, 896.

The court will find in Bennett v. R. R. Co., 102 U.S. a very clear and comprehensive opinion by Justice HARLAN on the obligations of railroad companies and others toward persons who have been invited, by invitation express or implied, to come to premises in the control of the owner or occupier.

We call the special attention of this court to the fact that so anxious was that great judge not to be misunderstood in his statement of a rather complex proposition, that he wrote, with his own hand the head note or syllabus of the case, as follows:

"The owner or occupant of land who, by invitation, express or implied, induces or leads others to come upon his premises for any lawful purpose is liable in damages to such persons--they using due care--for injuries occasioned by the unsafe condition of the land or its approaches, if such condition was known to him and not to them, and was suffered to exist, without timely notice to the public or to those who were likely to act upon such invitation."

We conceive that the confusion which seems to have occurred in many of the cases in regard to this principle arises from the failure, in many instances, just as in the case at bar, to distinguish between the occupier and the owner with respect to acts or conditions for which there is not a common responsibility, and those in which there is. Take, for instance, a case of this sort:

A tenant of a lodging house invites a guest to his apartment on business or pleasure. The occupier of a part of the tenement house or hotel has a right to demand of the owner of the building safe ingress and egress. Therefore, it is the duty of the owner of the building to provide proper and safe stairways, hallways, etc. If a person induced or invited to visit the occupier of an apartment, is injured by a defect in that portion of the building under the control and authority of the owner of the premises, then the owner of the premises would be liable in damages to the injured person.

But, suppose that the owner of the premises has performed all of his duties, and has provided safe approaches, hallways, etc., and the visitor on business or pleasure safely reaches and is admitted to the apartment of the occupier thereof, and thereafter while in said apartment, on business of his own with the occupier, and business with which the owner of the apartments has no concern, and in which the owner of the premises has no interest, is injured, by some negligence, willful or otherwise, of an employe of the occupier, would anybody contend, under such circumstances, that the owner of the premises was liable to the visitor in damages. And this is the distinction which runs through all these cases.

The distinction which obtains, is well explained in 2 Jaggard on Torts, 896, under the heading of "Test of Mutuality."

"An invitation to go on the premises of another imposes a duty to prevent harm to a person accepting it. Such invitation may be express or implied, and depends upon mutuality of interest. Invitation, therefore, in the technical sense, differs from invitation in the ordinary sense, implying the relation of host and guest. 'It is well settled that to come under an implied invitation, as distinguished from a mere license, the visitor must come for a purpose connected with the business in which the occupant is engaged, or which he permits to be carried on there. There must at least be some mutuality of interest in the subject to which the visitor's business relates, although the particular thing which is the object of the visit may not be one for the benefit of the occupant.' For example, if a person called at the office of a manufacturer's establishment for, and is granted, permission to see an employe, and while searching for such employe is injured by the machinery, the peril of which was hidden, there can be no recovery. 'To require the proprietor of a steamboat, factory, or a mill, conducted in the usual manner, whenever a man should ask permission to see an employe engaged in his duties, to anticipate that such person might become involved in some dangerous machinery, hidden or open, would be to exact too high a degree of diligence; but the presumption should be indulged that the person making the inquiry is acquainted with the machinery, its construction and position, and needs no attendant, or otherwise he would have made a request to that effect.'"

The court will observe that the fundamental and necessary averment must be that the business which carried the visitor to the place of injury was a business in which both the occupier and the owner had an interest, or in regard to which a common duty rested on both. It is true there are certain obligations resting on a railroad company under the law, of which it cannot rid itself by delegating to others the right to exercise any of the corporate powers or to use any of the corporate instrumentalities. Thus, if a citizen had been injured on the railroad tracks, or at some highway crossing by the circus train, or by some defective appliance thereof the railroad company could not be heard to say that the wrongful act was done by the circus people about their own business, because in such a case as this there is a common duty resting on both the railroad company and the circus people toward a citizen who is at a place where he has a right to be, and where, because of public policy or statute law, the railroad company has been required to discharge certain obligations to the public at large, a constituent member of which, the injured party is...