Seaboard Air Line Ry. Co. v. Fountain

• Decision Date: 15 October 1931
• Docket Number: 8340.
• Parties: SEABOARD AIR LINE RY. CO. v. FOUNTAIN.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

160 S.E. 789

173 Ga. 593

SEABOARD AIR LINE RY. CO. v. FOUNTAIN.

No. 8340.

Supreme Court of Georgia

October 15, 1931

Syllabus by the Court.

Giving instruction on statutory presumption of railroad's negligence held error in action for injury to passenger, where testimony sufficiently explained facts connected with injury (Laws 1929, p. 315).

Judicial construction already placed on statute by highest court of jurisdiction from which statute is adopted is treated as incorporated therein.

Statute making proof of injury prima facie evidence of railroad's negligence casts burden upon railway company to produce contrary evidence (Laws 1929, p. 315).

Question of railroad's negligence is for jury when railroad produces evidence to rebut presumption of negligence arising from injury (Laws 1929, p. 315).

Statute making proof of injury inflicted by train prima facie evidence of railroad's negligence held not void as arbitrary or unreasonable or as denying due process (Laws 1929, p. 315; Const. U.S. Amend. 14).

1. The court below did not err in overruling the general demurrer and the special demurrers to the petition.

2. The court erred in giving in charge to the jury the instruction (set out in the opinion) based upon the Act of August 24 1929 (Ga. Laws 1929, pp. 315, 316). This act was taken in totidem verbis from the statute of Mississippi upon this subject. In construing the Mississippi statute the Supreme Court of that state held that it was intended to operate only when the facts were not or could not be produced, in which event the burden was upon the company to prove the facts which are, as a general rule, peculiarly within its knowledge; and that the principle of this statute should not be given in charge to the jury where the testimony in the case sufficiently explains every material fact connected with the infliction of the injury, and that in such case the question of negligence or no negligence is to be decided from the facts in the case.

(a) When a statute has been adopted from another state, the judicial construction already placed thereon by the highest court of the jurisdiction from which it is taken accompanies it, and is treated as incorporated therein.

(b) The provision of this statute which makes proof of injury inflicted by the running of locomotives or cars of a railway company prima facie evidence of the want of reasonable skill and care on the part of the servants of the company in reference to such injury casts upon the railway company the burden of the duty of producing some evidence to the contrary; and when that is done the inference is at an end and the question of negligence is one for the jury from all the evidence. When all of the facts touching the injury inflicted are in evidence, both from the testimony of the plaintiff and of the defendant, the court should not give this statute in charge to the jury.

Error from City Court of Decatur County; Frank Guess, Judge.

Action by J. D. Fountain against the Seaboard Air Line Railway Company. Plaintiff recovered judgment, and defendant's motion for new trial was overruled, and defendant brings error.

Reversed.

B. Hugh Burgess, of Decatur, and John B. Gamble, of Athens, for plaintiff in error.

Poole & Fraser, of Atlanta, for defendant in error.

HINES J.

Fountain sued the Seaboard Air Line Railway Company for a personal injury. In his petition he makes this case: He was a passenger on the defendant's train from Atlanta to Tucker. When the train was nearing Tucker, an employee of the defendant announced that the next stop would be Tucker. After the train came to a complete stop he went to the door of the coach, when an employee of the railway stationed thereat announced to him that they were at Tucker. The train was composed of several coaches, and the one in which he was riding was the last coach of the train, which stopped some distance west of the station, placing his coach several hundred yards west of the railroad station. When he stepped off the train at the place designated by the company, and while on the right of way, he was precipitated down a steep embankment and fell upon an old tin tub, and received certain injuries which are fully set out in the petition. At the time he alighted from the train it was a very dark night. There were no lights along the right of way at the place he was told by the defendant to alight. He did not know that there was a steep embankment leading from the right of way, nor did he see it, and as he attempted to leave the right of way he fell down the embankment. The defendant failed to provide him a safe place upon which to alight from said train. At the time he was injured he was an able-bodied man, and was earning and capable of earning $2,500 per year. He has been totally disabled from performing any of his customary duties, and his disability will continue for an indefinite period of time. His earning capacity has been permanently impaired. He had an expectancy of 32.36 years. The following acts of negligence on the part of the defendant were the proximate cause of his injuries: Failing to furnish him a safe place upon which to alight from the train; failing to give to him that extraordinary degree of care owing to a passenger for hire maintaining adjacent to the right of way a steep declivity down which passengers alighting from its trains might fall; stopping the train and requiring him to alight from it upon the right of way which was not lighted on a dark night; requiring him, as a passenger for hire, to alight in the dark upon its right of way adjacent to a dangerous declivity; and negligently injuring and damaging him. He prayed judgment for $15,000.

The defendant demurred upon the ground that the petition set forth no cause of action; and demurred specially upon ten grounds. The court overruled the demurrers. The defendant excepted pendente lite, and assigns error on the rulings so excepted to. In its answer the defendant denied all the acts of negligence charged, and denies that it injured the plaintiff. It averred that the plaintiff was carried to his destination, and alighted in safety, and that if the plaintiff received any injury thereafter it was due to his own negligence. The trial resulted in a verdict for the plaintiff for $1,000. The defendant moved for a new trial upon the general grounds, and upon three special grounds to which reference will be hereinafter made. The judge overruled the motion for new trial; and the defendant excepted.

1. The petition, the material portions of which appear above, sets out a cause of action; and the trial judge did not err in overruling the general ground of the demurrer. Counsel for the railway company base the contrary contention upon the proposition that, "If the grounds of the special demurrer had been sustained by the court, then the ground of the general demurrer was good and should have been sustained." The converse of this proposition is true; that is, if the special grounds of the demurrer are not good, the general ground is bad. We shall attempt to show that the special grounds of demurrer are without merit. So we are of the opinion that the trial judge did not err in overruling the general demurrer.

2. Are the special grounds of demurrer good? We deal only with the grounds upon which counsel for the railway insist in their brief. The first ground is directed against a portion of a sentence in the eleventh paragraph of the petition, as follows: "And the defendant failed to furnish him as such passenger a safe place upon which to alight from said train." The grounds of attack are that this averment is too indefinite and uncertain, that it fails to put the defendant upon notice in which respect it failed to furnish plaintiff a safe place to alight from the train, that it fails to set out in what manner the place upon which he alighted was unsafe, that it is a mere conclusion unsupported by other allegations in this paragraph, and that it is in conflict with other averments in the petition that plaintiff alighted from the train in safety. Practically the same averment is made in paragraph 18 of the petition; and the defendant demurs to it upon the same grounds. The defendant specially demurred to the averments in paragraph 18, that the defendant was negligent "in maintaining adjacent to its right of way a steep declivity down which passengers alighting from its train may fall; in stopping its train and requiring your petitioner as a passenger for hire to alight from its train upon its right of way which was not lighted upon a dark night; in stopping its train several hundred yards away from the railroad station; and in negligently injuring and damaging your petitioner," on the grounds that they are all general, and do not specifically set forth wherein and how the company was negligent, the angle of the declivity, how far removed from the railway tracks, the distance between the declivity and the right of way, the height or depth of the declivity, and the general condition of the roadbed at the point where the petitioner alighted.

Taken apart from other allegations of the petition, some of these averments might seem to be subject to the criticisms of the special demurrer; but viewed in the light of the petition as a whole, they are without merit. The others are not subject to the criticisms urged against them. So we are of the opinion that the trial judge did not err in overruling them.

2. The judge gave in charge to the jury this instruction: "And in this connection I will charge you this, that in all cases against railroad companies for damages done to persons or property, proof of injury inflicted by the running of locomotives or cars of such companies shall be prima facie evidence of the lack of reasonable skill and care on...