Pennsylvania Co. v. Smith

• Decision Date: 16 October 1884
• Docket Number: 11,857
• Citation: 98 Ind. 42
• Parties: The Pennsylvania Company v. Smith
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

98 Ind. 42

The Pennsylvania Company v. Smith

No. 11,857

Supreme Court of Indiana

October 16, 1884

From the Floyd Circuit Court.

S Stansifer, for appellant.

J. V Kelso and J. H. Stotsenburg, for appellee.

OPINION

Black C.

The appellee sued the appellant and the Louisville, Evansville and St. Louis Railway Company, and the Jeffersonville, Madison and Indianapolis Railroad Company, the substance of the complaint being that, on, etc., the defendants were operating a railroad running through the city of New Albany, and were in possession of and operating on said railroad a locomotive engine and a train of cars thereto attached; and that while the plaintiff was engaged in unloading boxes of glass from his wagon into cars standing on a railroad switch, the defendants, by their servants, so negligently drove and conducted said engine and train that thereby the same ran and were driven against the plaintiff's said wagon and his horses harnessed thereto, without any fault or negligence on his part, thereby breaking and destroying said wagon, wounding and disabling said horses, etc., whereby the plaintiff was damaged, etc.

The defendants severally answered by general denial. The cause was tried by jury, and a verdict was returned against the appellant and in favor of the other defendants. The jury also returned answers to interrogatories asked by the defendants.

A motion for judgment in favor of the appellant upon the answers of the jury to interrogatories, notwithstanding the general verdict, and the appellant's motion for a new trial, were overruled, and judgment was rendered upon the verdict.

The appellant has assigned as errors the overruling of his said motions. The only interrogatories and answers specially indicated by the appellant as inconsistent with the general verdict, are the fourteenth and eighteenth, as follows:

"14. Was the place where the plaintiff's horses and wagon were placed, between the box car on the spur track and the main track, a safe place for the wagon and team, taking into consideration the distance between the outside of the wagon and the outside of passing cars and trains? Answer. No."

"18. Was there not a strong probability that a team standing with their heads toward an approaching train, and with a car on the south side of them, and the main track along which the train was moving toward them as near to them as in the present case, would become frightened and unmanageable? Ans. Yes."

In reviewing the ruling upon the motion for judgment upon the answers to interrogatories, notwithstanding the general verdict, we can not look to the evidence; and in order that the answers may control and override the verdict, there must be between them an antagonism, which could not be removed by any evidence admissible under the issue. If any particular answer be thought to be antagonistic to the general verdict, but may be reconciled therewith by the aid of other answers, the general verdict will not be overridden.

Assuming that the evidence showed the collision and damage to the plaintiff, the issue further involved the question whether the appellant was negligent, and, if so, the question whether the appellee was chargeable with contributory fault.

From the fact that the place at which the plaintiff's horses and wagon were placed, with reference to the distance therefrom to passing trains, was, as the event showed, not, as a matter of fact, a safe place, it would not necessarily follow either that the appellant was not negligent, or that there was contributory fault on the part of the appellee. Other facts, which may be readily supposed, might be shown in evidence, which, agreeably with this fact or conclusion, would plainly prove the appellant's negligence and absence of fault on the part of the appellee.

It was not shown by any of the answers of the jury that the team was standing with the heads of the horses toward the train, as it approached, and the evidence might have shown the contrary. But if the answers had shown the team to be in the position supposed by the eighteenth interrogatory, yet, although, as shown by another answer, the collision was caused by the fact that the horses were frightened by the train, it would not follow, because there was a strong probability that horses so situated would become frightened and unmanageable, that under all the circumstances not disclosed by the answers of the jury, but which might have been shown in evidence, the jury would not be...