Laurel Mercantile Co. v. Mobile & O.R. Co.

• Decision Date: 26 March 1906
• Citation: 87 Miss. 675,40 So. 259
• Parties: LAUREL MERCANTILE COMPANY v. MOBILE & OHIO RAILROAD COMPANY
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

40 So. 259

87 Miss. 675

LAUREL MERCANTILE COMPANY v. MOBILE & OHIO RAILROAD COMPANY

Supreme Court of Mississippi

March 26, 1906

FROM the circuit court of Clarke county, HON. ROBERT F. COCHRAN Judge.

The mercantile company, appellant, was the plaintiff in the court below; the railroad company, appellee, was the defendant there. From a judgment in defendant's favor, predicated of a peremptory instruction, the plaintiff appealed to the supreme court.

The suit was for damages arising from the death of live stock alleged to have been caused by the negligence of the railroad company in transporting them from East St. Louis, Ill. to Laurel, Miss. The declaration alleges that the cattle were shipped on the evening of January 20, and did not reach Laurel until the evening of the 23d; that only once--at Okolona, Miss. on the 22d--were they taken out of the car for rest and food and water; and that as a result of this failure on the part of the railroad company to properly care for the stock, to transport them safely and quickly to their destination, and to give them proper rest and sustenance nine of them contracted pneumonia and died. The railroad company claimed that the stock were loaded on the car on a cold, rainy afternoon; that there was plenty of food and water in the cattle car to sustain them on the way; that there was no unnecessary delay in the transportation, the only stops made being unavoidable; and that the stock were unloaded to rest at Okolona, where they were watered and fed on hay. It further claimed that the weather was cold, and that the sickness among the stock was due to the fact that they were loaded in the rain and transported in the cold after becoming heated by standing closely packed in the pens and that the plaintiff made no complaint to the agents about the condition of the stock at any of the points on the road or at the time of the unloading at the point of destination.

Reversed and remanded.

R. E. Halsell, and D. W. Heidelberg, for appellant.

While the defendant attempted to explain or excuse the delays in the shipment of the stock while en route, it made no effort to deny that, or to explain why, the stock were not fed, watered, and rested, as the law and the rule of the company required. Conceding, for argument's sake, that there was no delay in the shipment of the stock, what about the neglect to rest, feed, and water them? According to the letter of Alexander, the superintendent of defendant railroad company, the stock were not delivered to the New Orleans & Northeastern Railroad Company until eight o'clock on the morning of January 23--a period of sixty-four hours from the time of shipment--and during that time had not been fed, except that a small quantity of hay had been placed in the racks of the car, and, with the exception of a single occasion, had not been supplied with water. Did this so clearly negative the idea of negligence on the part of the defendant that the jury should have been denied the right to pass on the question? It was for the jury, and not for the court, to determine whether the failure to feed, water, and rest the stock was negligence, and whether this negligence brought about their death.

In the case of Gardner v. Michigan Railroad Co., 150 U.S. 349, the supreme court of the United States decided that the question of negligence is one of law, and for the court only, where the facts are such that all reasonable men must draw the same conclusion.

It is the duty of carriers to feed and water stock during transportation. Missouri Pacific R. R. Co. v. Fagan, 2 L R. A., 75; Chesapeake & Ohio R. R. Co. v. American Exchange Bank, 44 Ib., 449; Pitkin & Brooks v. Burham, 55 Ib., 289. United States Statutes, secs. 4386, 4390, require stock...