Seaboard Air Line Ry. v. Royal Palm Soap Co.

• Decision Date: 07 December 1920
• Citation: 86 So. 835,80 Fla. 800
• Parties: SEABOARD AIR LINE RY. v. ROYAL PALM SOAP CO.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

86 So. 835

80 Fla. 800

SEABOARD AIR LINE RY. v. ROYAL PALM SOAP CO.

Florida Supreme Court

December 7, 1920

Rehearing Denied Jan. 27, 1921.

Error to Circuit Court, Hillsborough County; F. M. Robles, Judge.

Action by the Royal Palm Soap Company against the Seaboard Air Line Railway. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant brings error.

Reversed for new trial.

Syllabus by the Court

SYLLABUS

Evidence should produce reasonable belief in facts essential to verdict; charges should conform to evidence. Charges given to the jury should conform to the evidence adduced in the case and the evidence should not only preponderate in favor of the verdict, but the evidence should produce in the minds of the jury a reasonable belief of the facts essential to the verdict.

Instructions on abstract guestions of law not pertinent should not be given. Judges are not authorized or required to give charges or instructions to juries on abstract questions of law not pertinent to the case before the court, and having no relation thereto.

Charges should be predicated upon facts in proof, and not be contrary thereto. Charges should state the law of the case correctly and should be predicated upon the facts in proof, and, when predicated upon a statement of facts contrary to the uncontradicted and undisputed proofs in the case, they are erroneous.

Charges must be confined to issue and predicated upon facts in proof. Charges of the court to juries must be confined to the issues and must be predicated upon facts in proof.

Abstract charges may be harmful where sufficiency of evidence to sustain verdict is not clear. Abstract charges that do not conform to the evidence adduced may be harmful error when the evidence does not certainly warrant a reasonable belief of the facts essential to sustain the verdict named.

COUNSEL

Knight, Thompson & Turner, of Tampa, for plaintiff in error.

Hilton S. Hampton and A. B. McMullen, both of Tampa, for defendant in error.

OPINION

PER CURIAM.

This writ of error was taken to a judgment awarding damages for property destroyed by fire. There was no testimony that fire was seen to escape from the railroad company's locomotive, but there was testimony that fire was seen on or near the track within perhaps 15 or 20 feet of the property soon after the engine passed over the place, and that within perhaps a half hour after a small fire was first seen on or near the track, the property in question was seen to be on fire. There was also testimony that boys smoking cigarettes were seen at or near the place where the fire was first seen at the time the engine passed. While there was testimony that the engine had been known to emit sparks of considerable size, it was shown that the engine had since then been overhauled and the defects remedied by appropriate additions to the smokestack and fire box. A preponderance of the testimony tended to indicate that the fire box was in a reasonably good condition, though there was testimony of a witness who 'just stood off on the side' of the engine that he saw two days after the fire that the fire box of the engine 'wasn't either put together close when it was built or it has rusted out or burned out in the corners.' There was not testimony that the smokestack was not in proper condition; and there was no showing that any fire escaped or could have escaped from the smokestack. The train crew testified to the careful operation of the engine and that no fire was seen to escape from the engine and no fire was seen by them after the engine passed over the particular place in switching.

It has been repeatedly held that charges given to the jury should conform to the evidence adduced in the case, ...