North Arkansas Telephone Co. v. Peters

• Decision Date: 13 May 1912
• Citation: 148 S.W. 273
• Parties: NORTH ARKANSAS TELEPHONE CO. et al. v. PETERS.
• Court: Arkansas Supreme Court

148 S.W. 273

NORTH ARKANSAS TELEPHONE CO. et al. v. PETERS.

Supreme Court of Arkansas.

May 13, 1912.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Washington County; J. S. Maples, Judge.

Action by W. I. Peters against the North Arkansas Telephone Company and another. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendants appeal. Affirmed.

This was an action brought by W. I. Peters against the North Arkansas Telephone Company and W. L. Stuckey to recover damages for personal injuries received by him while traveling along a public highway, and alleged to have been sustained by striking a telephone wire of said defendants, which they had negligently allowed to sag or hang too low across said highway.

W. I. Peters, for himself, testified substantially as follows: "At the time I was injured, I lived on the Rudolph farm in Washington county, and the injury occurred about 8 o'clock in the evening on August 3, 1911. The injury occurred upon my return from Elm Springs. In going there we went by Johnson's and came back the Elm Springs and Fayetteville road, because it was nearer. On my trip to Elm Springs that morning I did not pass by the point where I was injured that night. It was a dark cloudy night, and I was traveling in a wagon, and my son was driving it. I was sitting on the spring seat which was on top of the sideboards, and had the wagon bows and a sheet on the wagon. The first I knew the wire caught me under the chin, and lifted me back. I threw up my hand to ward it off, and it caught my arm right here [indicating]. When the wire caught me, it carried me back in the wagon. I threw up my hands to release myself from the wire, but was unable to do anything. Three of the bows of the wagon were broken and the telephone wire broke. I was injured at a point where a neighborhood road runs into the Elm Springs and Fayetteville road, and was traveling the latter road at the time I was injured. My arm pained me considerably, and several days afterwards I had it examined by a physician, and it was ascertained that one of the bones was broken. Several days after I was injured, I went to the place in the road where I was injured, and traced the telephone wire which injured me to the residence of the defendant Stuckey. * * *"

The injury occurred on Thursday night and other evidence for the plaintiff tended to show that the telephone wire in question was down on the ground on the Sunday prior to the day on which the injury occurred; that Mr. Sanders and Mr. Estep found the wire in this condition, and tied it up as high as they could reach by standing on the ground.

The evidence adduced by the defendants tended to show the following state of acts: The telephone company owned and operated a telephone line within the corporate limits of the town of Fayetteville. The defendant Stuckey lived four or five miles out in the country. He applied to the telephone company to have a telephone installed in his house. It was agreed between the parties that the defendant Stuckey should construct a telephone line from his residence to a point at the corporate limits of the city of Fayetteville, and that the telephone company would then connect his line with its wire, and install the telephone in the residence of Mr. Stuckey, and give him telephone service at the same rates it charged its city subscribers. This agreement was carried out. No inspection of the line constructed by Stuckey was made either by himself or by the company. When Stuckey could not get communication with the central office in Fayetteville, or whenever any of his neighbors reported that his line was...