Smith v. Missouri Pac. Ry. Co.
| Decision Date | 22 November 1915 |
| Docket Number | No. 11758.,11758. |
| Parties | SMITH v. MISSOURI PAC. RY. CO. |
| Court | Missouri Court of Appeals |
Appeal from Circuit Court, Cole County; J. G. Slate, Judge.
"Not to be officially published."
Action by E. C. Smith against the Missouri Pacific Railway Company. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.
C. D. Corum, of St. Louis, for appellant. Irwin & Peters, of Jefferson City, for respondent.
This is an action for damages against a common carrier for alleged negligent delay in the transportation of fat hogs to market. The trial resulted in a verdict and judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appealed. The only point argued by defendant is that the demurrer to the evidence it requested should have been given.
The hogs were shipped by plaintiff from Jefferson City in the evening of June 16, 1913, consigned to a commission dealer at the National Stockyards at East St. Louis, Ill., under the terms of a written contract which provided, inter alia, that defendant was not required to transport the shipment within any specified time, nor deliver it at destination at any particular hour, nor in time for any day's market. Following the usual method of transportation, defendant hauled the car to St. Louis, Mo., delivered it there to a terminal company which took it across the river to the stockyards, and set it at the unloading chute, where the hogs were unloaded by the stockyards company into pens and there delivered to the consignee. The evidence of plaintiff tends to show that, in the usual and reasonable performance of these duties by defendant and its connecting carriers, hogs thus shipped from Jefferson City to the stockyards arrived at their destination and were unloaded and put into the proper pen before 9 o'clock the next morning after shipment, and that, in this instance, the hogs arrived at St. Louis at the usual time, but were so delayed in their subsequent transportation that they were not unloaded until 2:40 o'clock in the afternoon — an unusual delay of almost six hours. Further, it appears from the evidence of plaintiff that 20 of the hogs died in consequence of being detained so long in the yards in East St. Louis, and that a loss was sustained on the remainder by a decline in market values.
Counsel for defendant argue that the evidence of plaintiff discloses a reason for the delay which absolves the carriers in law from the imputation of negligence.
In a deposition of the superintendent of the stockyards company taken by plaintiff to prove the traffic arrangements subsisting between defendant and the connecting carriers, counsel for defendant, on cross-examination, adduced testimony which they contend shows that the delay was caused by unusually heavy arrivals of live stock that morning which congested the terminal yards, and that the consignments were handled in the order of their arrival as expeditiously as possible under such extraordinary circumstances. The testimony relied upon does not, in our opinion, bear out the...
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