Kansas City Western Railway Company v. George Adow

• Decision Date: 31 January 1916
• Docket Number: No. 127,127
• Parties: KANSAS CITY WESTERN RAILWAY COMPANY, Plff. in Err., v. GEORGE B. McADOW
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

240 U.S. 51

36 S.Ct. 252

60 L.Ed. 520

KANSAS CITY WESTERN RAILWAY COMPANY, Plff. in Err.,

v GEORGE B. McADOW.

No. 127.

Submitted January 18, 1916.

Decided January 31, 1916.

Messrs. Charles F. Hutchings and McCabe Moore for plaintiff in error.

Messrs. John H. Atwood and Oscar S. Hill for defendant in error.

Mr. Justice Holmes delivered the opinion of the court:

This is an action for personal injuries, brought by the defendant in error against the plaintiff in error, in whose employ he was. The original petition alleged that the defendant operated a line of electric railway extending from Leavenworth, Kansas, through Wolcott and Kansas City, in the same state, into Kansas City, Missouri; that the plaintiff was a motorman upon a car on the line and was injured in Kansas by a collision due to the defendant's negligence. An amendment was allowed alleging that the plaintiff was injured on a trip from Kansas City, Missouri, to Leavenworth, with further details, and that the defendant's negligent acts were in violation of the act of Congress controlling such matters when the parties were engaged in commerce among the states. The defendant was a Kansas corporation having an electric railway from Leavenworth into Kansas City, Kansas. It had a traffic agreement with the Metropolitan Street Railway Company operating street railways in Kansas City, Missouri, by which the latter was to receive the cars of the former, carrying passengers and freight, and move them through designated streets in Missouri and back to Kansas; each party to be liable for damage due to its negligence during this part of the transit, and the fares and freight money to be divided in certain proportions. By a later agreement the route was modified and it was provided that the defendant should pay the trainmen's wages during the movement in Missouri, but that they should be under the exclusive control of the Metropolitan Company, and, as between said companies, should in all respects be regarded for the time being as its employees. There was evidence that in fact, at the time of the accident, the only control exercised by the Missouri Company was to put a conductor upon the car to receive the fares; that while in Missouri it received its orders from the Kansas side; and that the company was in the hands of receivers, who seem not to have recognized the contract. The plaintiff got a verdict, which was sustained. The errors assigned are, in substance, that the amendment expressly bringing the case under the act of Congress ought not to have been allowed; that the act does not apply to electric roads, and that, if it does, the defendant was not engaged in commerce among the states, or at least was not if the contract between the companies governed the movement of the car.

As to the first, it would be enough to say that if the declaration on which the case was tried brought it under the act, the fact that it appeared as an amendment to one that alleged the same facts with the exception of the plaintiff's coming from beyond the state raises no question under the laws of the United States. Central Vermont R. Co. v. White, 238 U. S. 507, 513, 59 L. ed. 1433, 1437, 35 Sup. Ct. Rep. 865, 9 N. C. C. A. 265; Brinkmeier v. Missouri P. R. Co. 224 U. S. 268, 270, 56 L. ed. 758, 760, 32 Sup. Ct. Rep. 412. The state court sustained the amendment on the ground of waiver, but if it had held it allowable as a matter of course, no Federal right would have been infringed. Wabash R. Co. v. Hayes, 234 U. S. 86, 90, 58 L. ed. 1226, 1230, 34 Sup. Ct. Rep. 729, 6 N. C. C. A. 224. It is said that by the amendment it gave a jurisdiction to the Missouri court that otherwise it would not have had under the act of April 5, 1910, chap. 143, 36 Stat. at L. 291, Comp. Stat....