Lairson v. Kansas City Rys. Co.

• Decision Date: 13 June 1921
• Docket Number: No. 14045.,14045.
• Citation: 232 S.W. 484
• Parties: LAIRSON v. KANSAS CITY RYS. CO.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

232 S.W. 484

LAIRSON v. KANSAS CITY RYS. CO.

No. 14045.

Kansas City Court of Appeals, Missouri.

June 13, 1921.

Rehearing Denied June 27, 1921.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Jackson County; Thos. B. Buckner, Judge.

"Not to be officially published."

Action by Louise Lairson against the Kansas City Railways Company. From judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals. Reversed, and cause remanded for new trial.

Ed. C. Hyde and Chas. N. Sadler, both of Kansas City, Mo., R. J. Higgins, of Kansas City, Kan., and John E. Connors and E. 3. Ball, both of Kansas City, Mo., for appellant.

Capron, Butcher & Knoop, of Kansas City, Mo., for respondent.

TRIMBLE, P. J.

Plaintiff's action is for damages on account of personal injuries sustained in a fall she claimed to have received while in the act of boarding defendant's street car as a passenger, caused by the negligent premature starting of the car. She obtained a verdict and judgment in the sum of $2,750, and defendant has appealed.

The petition alleged that one of defendant's south-bound cars stopped at Main and Twelfth Streets in Kansas City, Mo., to permit persons to board said car for passage thereon; that "plaintiff thereupon, without delay, proceeded to board said car, prepared to pay the legal fare, and put her foot upon the lower step and was in the act of entering said car, when the defendant's employees in charge of and operating said car carelessly and negligently, and without warning plaintiff, caused said car to start forward and proceed on its way without waiting for the plaintiff to get a safe and firm footing upon said car; that the unexpected and pre mature starting which the defendant's employees carelessly and negligently caused said car to make, without waiting for the plaintiff to get a safe and firm footing upon said car, threw the plaintiff from the lower step of said car, thereby severely, painfully, and permanently injuring the plaintiff as follows," etc.

The answer was a general denial.

The evidence in plaintiff's behalf was that, as the car was standing still for passengers to board it, plaintiff and her mother came to the car entrance, the plaintiff in front of her mother. A man was on the step getting on the car, and plaintiff "waited just a second" until he got out of the way, and then took hold of the handhold of the car and got on the step with one foot and raised the other from the ground, when the car suddenly started and went on its way, throwing plaintiff to the ground. She did not fall upon the pavement, but the foot on which the weight of her body was resting came off the step and went to the pavement, causing a sudden jerk or jar while her body was in a somewhat twisted position, and her mother, being immediately behind her, caught her around the shoulders and helped her to maintain her balance and kept her from falling over prone upon the street. Her mother helped her over to the curb, where the plaintiff, crying with pain, sat down until she and her mother boarded another car and went home. She immediately went to bed. A physician was called, who came in a few moments. He found her complaining of pain through the lower part of her abdomen and in her left hip, left side, and shoulder. Her temperature was subnormal, her pulse bad, and she was in a state of shock. His testimony was that the main injury was at the place where the left hip joined up against the spine. "The hip bone fits the spine in an immobile joint and it had been slipped enough to break it loose a little bit and which caused the pain and tenderness; it was very tender on pressure, and she said there was very much pain." He said he treated her for three weeks, at the latter part of which she did not suffer as much pain as she had been suffering, but still had some pain there, especially in attempting to move around. He gave it as his opinion that the injury to the hip was permanent and would bother her as long as she lived. He also gave it as his opinion that the injury could be easily produced by a wrench or jerk of the body; that where the body is in the air, suspended by two opposite corners thereof, as it were, the left hand and the right foot, and the body came to the ground with the weight thereof, it would not take a hard jerk or sudden twist to do a great deal of damage to the pelvis and the bones thereof. On cross-examination he said anything that would give the body a sudden jerk and twist of the pelvis would cause the same condition would not necessarily have to be a jerk, but a fall might produce the same condition.

"The same injury could be produced in different ways; I have seen them produced from falls. As I say, if she gave a history of lighting on the payment, and I found that condition, I would have attributed it to that.

"Q. But you just attributed it to whatever she told you? A. I had to take the history. I found the condition of the joint, and had to take the history to attribute it to, and the joint was injured, and I got the history of the case. I had to depend to a certain extent on that. She said she was well before the injury, and gave the history of the wrench, and I found the condition of the joint.

"Q. Do you think the woman is suffering from hysteria now? A. To a certain extent; yes."

A reading of the doctor's testimony does not make it as clear as it might have been made whether he found for himself that the sacro-iliac joint was loosened or whether that was his deduction from her complaints of pain and tenderness in that region.

Plaintiff's own evidence was to the effect that she was wrenched in her side, back, and hip; that she began flowing before she reached home, and continued to flow while in bed, a period of three weeks; that her health had been good prior to the accident; that before the accident she had not needed medical attention for years and was...