Jones v. Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Company

• Decision Date: 02 April 1907
• Citation: Jones v. Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Company, 43 So. 813, 90 Miss. 547 (Miss. 1907)
• Parties: JESSE JONES ET AL. v. YAZOO & MISSISSIPPI VALLEY RAILROAD COMPANY
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

43 So. 813

90 Miss. 547

JESSE JONES ET AL. v. YAZOO & MISSISSIPPI VALLEY RAILROAD COMPANY

Supreme Court of Mississippi

April 2, 1907

March 1907

FROM the circuit court of Warren county, HON. JOHN N. BUSH, Judge.

Jones and others, appellants, were plaintiffs in the court below the railroad company, appellee, was defendant there. From a judgment in favor of the railroad company, predicated of a peremptory instruction, the plaintiffs appealed to the supreme court.

The plaintiffs were the next of kin to Scott Jones, a locomotive engineer of the defendant, who was fatally injured by the derailment of the engine which he was operating, caused by striking a cow on the track; the body of the animal passed under the wheels of the engine and caused it to leave the track on a sharp curve. The declaration alleged negligence on the part of the railroad company, in that (1) the engine which was operated by Jones, at the time of his fatal injury was equipped with what is known, in railroad parlance, as a "standard stub pilot," having a stationary coupler-bar, the pilot being shorter from heel to toe than it should have been, and that the stationary bar of the coupler constituted an obstruction, and interfered with the throwing from the track of objects struck by the engine, and that this condition with respect to the pilot and coupler was unsafe defective and dangerous; (2) that the conditions above set forth had been called to the attention of the railroad company by complaints from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, a protective order to which Jones belonged, and that the defendant company by its officers had promised to substitute safer appliances.

The railroad company denied that any promise had been made to substitute any other kind of pilot or coupler, and denied that the kind in use on its engine was dangerous, as compared with other kinds, or unsafe or defective in any way, but, on the contrary, constituted the standard pilot and coupler in use on the largest railroad systems throughout the United States; and that in using the same it was not guilty of negligence or failure of duty, and therefore not liable for the injuries to the engineer, under Constitution of 1890 sec. 193. The court below gave a peremptory instruction for the defendant, and the plaintiffs appealed to the supreme court.

Affirmed.

McLaurin, Armistead & Brien, for appellants.

[The brief of appellant's counsel was lost or withdrawn from the record before it reached the reporter.]

Mayes & Longstreet, and C. N. Burch, for appellee.

It was shown in evidence, and without dispute, that the pilot with the bar-coupler attached, in use on the engine operated by the decedent, was one of a kind in almost universal use by the greater railroad systems of our country. From the depositions of the master mechanics, engine foremen and experienced engineers of several different railroad systems the appellee proved that many stub pilots, in use on different railroads, were shorter in length than the stub pilots, including the one above mentioned, used on appellee's line. It is true that the appellants offered evidence to the effect that some few systems use a longer pilot and flexible coupler, but while it is always the case that some persons and some corporations will at once adopt and experiment with recent inventions and innovations, this does not in any wise render reprehensible the continued use by others of appliances reasonably safe and advantageous. Nor is it contended by the appellants that the use of any other pilot and coupler, even of the kinds advocated or suggested by appellant's, would prevent derailments on account of the engine's striking obstructions on the track. The accident which caused the death of the engineer was one that was unavoidable, in so far as concerned having this or that kind of pilot. The main witnesses for the appellants content themselves...