Scheefer v. Railroad Company
| Decision Date | 01 October 1881 |
| Parties | SCHEEFER v. RAILROAD COMPANY |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
ERROR to the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Virginia.
The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.
Mr. George A. King, with whom were Mr. Charles King and Mr. John B. Sanborn, for the plaintiffs in error.
Mr. Linden Kent, contra.
The plaintiffs, executors of Charles Scheffer, deceased, brought this action to recover of the Washington City, Virginia Midland, and Great Southern Railroad Company damages for his death, which they allege resulted from the negligence of the company while carrying him on its road. The defendant's demurrer to their declaration was sustained, and to reverse the judgment rendered thereon they sued out this writ of error.
The statute of Virginia, under which the action was brought, is, as to the question raised on the demurrer, identical with those of all the other States, giving the right of recovery when the death is caused by such default or neglect as would have entitled the party injured to recover damages if death had not ensued.
The declaration, after alleging the carelessness of the officers of the company, by which a collision occurred between the train on which Scheffer was and another train, on the seventh day of December, 1874, proceeds as follows:——
'Whereby said sleeping-car was rent, broken, torn, and shattered, and by means whereof the said Charles Scheffer was cut, bruised, maimed, and disfigured, wounded, lamed, and injured about his head, face, neck, back, and spine, and by reason whereof the said Charles Scheffer became and was sick, sore, lame, and disordered in mind and body, and in his brain and spine, and by means whereof phantasms, illusions, and forebodings of unendurable evils to come upon him, the said Charles Scheffer, were produced and caused upon the brain and mind of him, the said Charles Scheffer, which disease, so produced as aforesaid, baffled all medical skill, and continued constantly to disturb, harass, annoy, and prostrate the nervous system of him, the said Charles Scheffer, to wit, from the seventh day of December, A. D. 1874, to the eighth day of August, 1875, when said phantasms, illusions, and forebodings, produced as aforesaid, overcame and prostrated all his reasoning powers, and induced him, the said Charles Scheffer, to take his life in an effort to avoid said phantasms, illusions, and forebodings, which he then and there did, whereby and by means of the careless, unskilful, and negligent acts of the said defendant aforesaid, the said Charles Scheffer, to wit, on the eighth day of August, 1875, lost his life and died, leaving him surviving a wife and children.'
The Circuit Court sustained the demurrer on the ground that the death of Scheffer was not due to the negligence of the company in the judicial sense which made it liable under the statute. That the relation of such negligence was too remote as a cause of the death to justify recovery, the proximate cause being the suicide of the decedent,—his death by his own immediate act.
In this opinion we concur.
Two cases are cited by counsel, decided in this court, on the subject of the remote and proximate causes of acts where the liability of the party sued depends on whether the act is held to be the one or the other; and, though relied on by plaintiffs we think they both sustain...
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