Mason v. Richmond & D. R. Co.
| Decision Date | 22 December 1892 |
| Citation | 16 S.E. 698,111 N.C. 482 |
| Parties | MASON v. RICHMOND & D. R. CO. |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
Appeal from superior court, Guilford county; E. T. BOYKIN, Judge.
Action by James C. Mason against the Richmond & Danville Railroad Company. Judgment for defendant. Plaintiff appeals. Reversed.
Where a brakeman is crushed through the absence of bumpers on the cars he is called upon to couple on a dark night, of the condition of which he could not have previously informed himself, the company is liable, whether such cars belong to it or to another railroad, and are being transported by it.
The following is the agreement signed by plaintiff brakeman after entering the service of defendant company:
John A. Barringer, for appellant.
D. Schenck, for respondent.
The court below held that, upon the whole evidence, the plaintiff had failed to make out a prima facie case. The burden was upon the servant, suing his employers, to show (1) that the machinery was defective; (2) that the defects were the proximate cause of the injury; (3) that the master had knowledge, or might, by the exercise of ordinary care, have had knowledge, of such defects. Hudson v. Railroad Co., 104 N.C. 491, 10 S.E. Rep. 669. The question presented by the appeal, therefore, is whether, in any aspect of the evidence, the plaintiff has relieved himself of the onus probandi imposed upon him by law.
The first point to be considered is whether the defendant company was negligent in failing to provide what is known as the "Janney," or some other improved coupler, which would obviate the necessity, under any circumstances, of going between the ends of cars in order to fasten one to another. The general rule is that it is not the duty of railway companies to furnish machinery of the very best varieties, or to attach appliances of the latest and safest kinds, but that it is culpable to use cars or engines of any particular pattern which an ordinary inspection would show to be defective. In view of the changes incident to new inventions and discoveries, facts which would not have shown negligence a few years since may now, or in the near future, be declared in law ample evidence of culpable dereliction in duty, such as will involve liability for damages. 1 Shear. & R. Neg. § 12; Black well v. Railroad Co., (decided at this term,) 16 S.E. Rep. 12. We think that the time has arrived when railroad companies should be required to attach such couplers, and perhaps air-brakes, or appliances equally safe and effective for checking the speed of moving trains, on all passenger cars, since, as a rule, each corporation uses for carrying passengers none but its own conveyances, and the new couplers have now become so cheap, as compared to the value of the lives and limbs of servants and passengers, that it is not unreasonable to require that they provide them, on peril of answering for any damage which might have been obviated by their use. But while, doubtless, the day will soon come when they can be attached at comparatively small cost to all freight cars, it might seriously embarrass our commerce, involving an interchange, for the purposes of expeditious transportation, of vehicles between all of the roads from Canada to Mexico, were every carrier required, not only to incur the expense of buying the right, and readjusting all of its own cars for the use, of the improved fastening, but also to choose between refusing to receive a car of another company without such couplers, and incurring contingent liability for using it; since the liability of the corporation for such defects in those received from other companies is the same as for defects in its own. Patt. Ry. Acc. Law, 312; Miller v. Railroad Co., 92 N.Y. 657; Jones v. Railroad Co., 92 N.Y. 628. But it appears from the evidence that the plaintiff was suddenly called upon on a very dark night to couple to the train two box cars standing upon the siding at Durham,--one of which belonged to the defendant, and another to a different company,--and that, when the train backed towards the train on the siding, he saw that the pin, which he had adjusted with a stick in the drawhead of the car standing on the track, would not go down into the link of the drawhead in the moving car, which he had also arranged with his stick, unless he should use his hand to push it down, and in this emergency he rushed in between the cars, as the conductor had ordered him to do whenever he failed in the effort to couple with a stick. After getting between the standing and the moving car, he discovered for the first time that there were no bumpers on either car. Bumpers are blocks of wood fastened to the end of a box car, above and below or on either side of the drawhead, and usually protrude about eight or ten inches, so that they serve the double purpose of preventing drawheads from being broken by a collision, and of protecting brakemen who may be between the cars. Drawheads have springs in them, and give way when they come into collision with each other, so that they cannot be made to subserve the purpose, like bumpers, of holding the cars apart. In Gottlieb v. Railroad Co., 100 N.Y. 467, 3 N.E. 344, where the facts were that a brakeman was injured in coupling two cars belonging to another company, the bumpers being only three inches long, the court said: "The defendant was under obligation to its employes to exercise reasonable care and diligence in furnishing them safe and suitable implements, cars, and machinery for the discharge of their duties. *** The defect was an obvious one, easily discoverable by the most ordinary inspection, and it would seem to be the grossest negligence to put such cars into any train, and especially into a train consisting of cars of different gauge. But these two cars did not belong to the defendant. They belonged to other companies, and came to it loaded, and it was drawing them over its road. *** It is not bound to take such cars if they are known to be defective and unsafe.
Even if it is not bound to make tests to discover secret defects, and is not responsible for such defects, it is bound to inspect foreign cars just as it would inspect its own cars. *** When cars come to it which have defects visible or discoverable by ordinary inspection, it must either remedy such defects, or refuse to take such cars. So much, at least, is due from it to its employes. The employes can no more be said to assume the risk of such defects in foreign cars than in cars belonging to the company. *** The defect here complained of was obvious, easily discoverable by the most ordinary inspection, and it seems it could have been easily remedied by simply nailing or fastening additional strips of wood to the ends of the cars, so as to give the bumpers sufficient width to afford the protection needed and intended." The case being exactly in point, it seems not inappropriate to reproduce the language of Judge EARL from this elaborate opinion, instead of discussing the same question at greater length for ourselves. The general rule is that, where freight cars are obviously so defectively made, whether by a failure to attach bumpers at all, or to make them sufficiently long to protect a person standing between the cars when in motion, or in consequence of any other fault in construction, that the slightest indiscretion on the part of an operative may endanger his life, the company is liable for any injury resulting from such defects. Railroad Co. v. Fredericks, 71 III. 294; Railroad Co. v. Jackson, 55 III. 492; Wedgewood v. Railroad Co., 41 Wis. 478. In Gottlieb's Case, supra, it will be observed that stress was laid upon the fact that the want of a bumper would have been discovered by an ordinary inspection, and in our case, as well as in that, the brakeman was suddenly called upon to pass between two cars, of the condition of which he could not have previously informed himself. Before daylight on a dark morning the duty devolved upon him of attaching a car, which it may be was never north of Wilmington, until brought by some freight train with which plaintiff had no connection on the day before to the station where he found it. In Johnson v. Railroad Co., 81 N.C. 459, where the injury to the plaintiff was caused by a defective rod, which he had had no reasonable opportunity to inspect, Chief Justice SMITH, speaking for the court, said: The defendant ought to have examined its own car and, upon discovering its condition, bumpers could have been placed upon it at comparatively trivial cost, and the same duty of inspection devolved upon it when the other car was tendered to it; but upon examination it had the option, as will appear from the authorities already cited, of refusing to receive it at all or of repairing it, so as to make it safe, after it was received.
So apart from the special contract which is pleaded as...
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