Mosnat v. Chi. & N. W. Ry. Co.
| Decision Date | 21 May 1901 |
| Citation | 86 N.W. 297,114 Iowa 151 |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
| Parties | MOSNAT v. CHICAGO & N. W. RY. CO. |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from district court, Tama county; O. Caswell, Judge.
Action to recover damages for an injury resulting in the death of Charles A. Schaefer. Trial to a jury, and verdict and judgment for the plaintiff. The defendant appeals. Reversed.Hubbard, Dawley & Wheeler, for appellant.
J. J. Mosnat, for appellee.
The plaintiff's intestate was an engineer employed by the defendant. On the 26th day of July, 1898, while pulling a passenger train from Hawarden to Eagle Grove, he ran into freight and coal cars which had in some way got partially onto the main track at a switch about a mile and a half west of the station at Eagle Grove. In this collision he received injuries causing his death soon after. The defendant is charged with negligence in permitting said cars to be on the main line of its road at the time in question, and with negligence in displaying a signal indicating a clear track at that point, and with negligence in constructing and in permitting its automatic split switch at said point to become out of repair, so that it would not turn the standard properly and display the correct signal to an approaching train.
The plaintiff put in evidence, over the defendant's objection, a book of rules issued by the defendant for the government of its employés generally, containing 124 pages, and at least 368 rules. Upon what theory they were offered or admitted is not indicated to us, further than that they were rules of the company, and therefore admissible. In the first place, if the book contained any rules which were competent evidence in the case, they should have been designated and offered separately, instead of being thrown in en masse for the jury to look over, and determine which rules might or might not have a bearing upon the issues before it. Many of these rules are given in an amended abstract filed by the plaintiff, evidently with the thought that they are competent evidence. But, in our judgment, but few if any of them can be held admissible. The liability of the defendant in cases of this kind cannot, as a general rule, be fixed or changed by its rules governing its employés in the operation of its trains, except possibly as such rules may seek to control or direct the conduct of the injured person; for it is manifest that the rules may not fix a legal standard of care. They may require a higher standard than the law...
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