New Orleans & Northeastern Railroad Co. v. Williams

• Decision Date: 28 November 1910
• Citation: 53 So. 619,96 Miss. 373
• Parties: NEW ORLEANS & NORTHEASTERN RAILROAD COMPANY v. DORSEY WILLIAMS
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

53 So. 619

96 Miss. 373

NEW ORLEANS & NORTHEASTERN RAILROAD COMPANY v. DORSEY WILLIAMS

Supreme Court of Mississippi

November 28, 1910

October 1909

FROM the circuit court of Lauderdale county, HON. JOHN L. BUCKLEY Judge.

Williams appellee, was plaintiff in the court below; the railroad company, appellant, was defendant there. From a judgment in plaintiff's favor the defendant appealed to the supreme court.

The plaintiff, a yard employe of defendant, was engaged with another in carrying a heavy object on their shoulders across defendant's yard at Meridian, and they undertook to pass between two cars standing on a side track quite close to each other; while endeavoring to pass between them one of the cars was moved towards the other, as was charged, by the negligence of train operatives in moving a train against it without giving warning, and plaintiff was badly injured by being caught between the cars. The opinion of the court further states the case.

Reversed.

McWillie & Thompson and A. S. Bozeman, for appellant.

The third instruction for the plaintiff on the subject of a safe place to work was wholly inapplicable to the case, and should not have been given. The doctrine only applies, as a general rule, to permanent places of labor, such as are provided in factories. In this case the plaintiff was transporting a heavy object from where it had been placed in defendant's yard to the defendant's shops. A farmer does not guarantee that there are no "sinkholes" along the route when he directs a laborer to carry a plow from one place on his farm to another. There is no evidence that the place at which plaintiff received his injuries was unsafe; according to his testimony he was injured by being caught between two cars, caused by defendant's train moving one of them, towards the other. There is no safe place to be crushed between railroad cars. The whole doctrine invoked by the instruction is foreign to the case, and carried the idea to the jury that defendant was liable, although there might be no liability on account of the movement of the cars, because a safe place to work was not furnished plaintiff; and the evidence of the failure to furnish the safe place was nothing more than the fact that plaintiff was hurt between the cars.

If a master were maliciously to strike his servant over the head with a hammer while the latter was engaged in operating machinery an action would lie, but the doctrine of a safe place to work would be foreign to the...