Lynchard v. Yazoo & M.V.R. Co.

• Decision Date: 20 April 1914
• Docket Number: 16492
• Citation: 64 So. 935,107 Miss. 46
• Parties: EVA LYNCHARD v. YAZOO & M.V.R. CO
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

64 So. 935

107 Miss. 46

EVA LYNCHARD v. YAZOO & M.V.R. CO

No. 16492

Supreme Court of Mississippi

April 20, 1914

APPEAL from the circuit court of Sunflower county, HON. MONROE MCCLURG, Judge.

Suit by Eva Lynchard against the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals.

Appellant purchased a ticket from Morehead to Inwood, a flag station on the line of the appellee, a distance of four or five miles. She boarded the northbound train and took a seat in the rear coach. Before the conductor reached her for the purpose of collecting tickets, the train had passed Inwood, and when she handed her ticket to the conductor she called his attention to that fact. The train stopped at the next station, called Sunflower, and the appellant got off the train. Appellant lived about a mile north of Inwood and about two and one-half miles south of Sunflower. She had notified her brother to meet her on the northbound train at Inwood. No one met her at Sunflower, and she was without funds to pay a hotel bill, or to hire a team to drive her to her home. She had with her a grip weighing about twenty or twenty-five pounds. She testified that it took her about three hours to walk back from Sunflower to her home lugging this grip, and that as a consequence she reached home very much exhausted and was confined to her bed for several days with fever. On the trial, the court instructed the jury to find for plaintiff and award nominal damages only. From a judgment for one dollar she appeals.

Judgment reversed.

Walter S. Chapman, for appellant.

The first assignment of error in the above styled cause is to the action of the court below in giving the instruction to the jury at the instance of the defendant there, appellee here to find for the plaintiff and assess her merely nominal damages.

The instruction excludes actual damages, although it was shown that nothing in palliation was in evidence in the court below in regard to the action of the defendant there, appellee here, in not stopping at appellant's point of destination, and no reason was assigned for such delinquency then or at any subsequent time.

In one of the latest decisions the fact is emphasized by this court in the opinion, and also in the opinion overruling a suggestion of error, that in such case where a passenger is carried beyond his or her place of destination, he or she can always recover actual damages, and to quote the language employed by the then chief justice of the supreme court will be sufficient, we contend, to establish reversible error committed by the court below. In the case of Y. & M. V R. R. Co. v. Hardie, 100 Miss. 136, we quote as follows "It is evident the company is liable for whatever actual damage Mrs. Hardie may have sustained by the reason of the failure to perform its duty." Higgins v. L. N. O. &amp T. R. R. Co., 64 Miss. 80-82; also, L. N. O. & T. R. R. Co. v. Mask, 64 Miss. 738-745, inclusive. Railroad Co. v. Hines, 69 Miss. 160 to 168.

The second assignment of error is to the action of the court below in refusing to give the plaintiff in the court below instructions number 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, respectively.

If the plaintiff in the court below, appellant here, was entitled to have the jury consider the question of actual damages, it follows logically that the one instruction given at the request of the defendant to the jury, "to find only nominal damages for the plaintiff," was error, and ipso facto, the instructions numbered 5, 1, 2, and 3 refused by the court below, should have been given as each one refers to the recovery of actual damages; therefore a reversible error on the part of the court below is a natural sequence.

We think the court erred in refusing to give for the consideration of the jury punitory damages asked for in instruction number 4. Added to the injury caused by the negligence of the defendant was the insult sustained by the appellant through the conduct and bearing of the conductor or auditor in the presence of the appellant and in the presence of Mr. C. H. Aldridge and others in the car in which appellant was seated. He deliberately refused to satisfy her and allay her anxiety by speech or...