Louisville & N.R. Co. v. Travis

• Decision Date: 15 April 1915
• Docket Number: 9
• Citation: 192 Ala. 453,68 So. 342
• Parties: LOUISVILLE & N.R. CO. v. TRAVIS.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

68 So. 342

LOUISVILLE & N.R. CO. v. TRAVIS.

192 Ala. 453

No. 9

Supreme Court of Alabama

April 15, 1915

Appeal from Circuit Court, Cullman County; D.W. Speake, Judge.

Action by B.M. Travis against the Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.

See also, 183 Ala. 415, 62 So. 851.

The following is charge 43: If you believe the evidence, I charge you that the oysters and eggs eaten by plaintiff neither appeared tainted nor tasted tainted, nor smelled tainted.

George H. Parker, of Cullman, and Eyster & Eyster, of New Decatur for appellant.

F.E St. John, of Cullman, J.B. Brown, of Montgomery, and A.A. Griffith, of Cullman, for appellee.

SAYRE J.

The wrong and injury complained of throughout was that plaintiff had been made ill by food furnished to him by defendant. Count 4, added by amendment at the trial, stated no new cause of action; it showed merely that plaintiff's illness was caused by different means, by eggs, instead of oysters. The amended complaint, thus considered, was properly allowed, and it appeared without dispute that it was not barred by the statute of limitations of one year, and the court properly so instructed the jury.

It is rather obvious that the assignments of error based upon rulings on evidence have no merit, and they have not been very seriously argued. Some of these rulings related to opinion evidence. The witnesses whose opinions were admitted were expert, some as medical men, others as cooks and persons long accustomed to handling and preparing oysters for the table. A witness may have expert knowledge of some of the ordinary affairs of life. Staples v. Steed, 167 Ala. 241, 52 So. 646, Ann.Cas. 1912A, 480. We have found no error in these rulings.

The court gave the law in charge to the jury as laid down in this case on former appeal. Travis v. Louisville & Nashville R.R. Co., 183 Ala. 415, 62 So. 851. It would serve no purpose to go over the subject again.

Charges were refused to appellant which went to the proposition that the evidence did not warrant an inference of negligence on the part of defendant, its servants and agents. By competent expert opinions of attending physicians appellee sought to show that his illness was the result of ptomaine poison, and by a process of exclusion, that the putrefactive bacteria producing the poison found their way into his stomach by means of the food served to him on defendant's dining car. If the evidence to this effect was to be believed--and we find nothing to discredit it--appellee's case thus far was quite well established. This much established, the result of the ruling on...