South Bend Home Telephone Co. v. Beaning
| Decision Date | 01 May 1914 |
| Docket Number | 22,304 |
| Citation | 105 N.E. 52,181 Ind. 586 |
| Parties | South Bend Home Telephone Company et al. v. Beaning |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
From Laporte Circuit Court; Harry B. Tuthill, Special Judge.
Action by Thomas H. Beaning against the South Bend Home Telephone Company and another. From a judgment for plaintiff, the defendants appeal.
Affirmed.
Drummond & Drummond, A. G. Graham, Anderson Parker and Crabill & Crumpacker, for appellants.
Frank E. Osborn, W. A. McVey and Lee L. Osborn, for appellee.
On September 5, 1904, Thomas H. Beaning, then in the employ of the city of South Bend as an electrician in connection with the city's police and fire alarm systems, was injured while at work on a telephone pole belonging to appellant South Bend Home Telephone Company. Subsequently he brought suit against the telephone company and the South Bend Electric Company, now a part of the Indiana and Michigan Electric Company, and alleged that his injuries resulted from the concurring negligence of the two defendants. The cause was tried by a jury in the Laporte Circuit Court, which court, at the close of the plaintiff's evidence, directed a verdict in favor of the defendants and rendered judgment accordingly. On appeal, the Appellate Court reversed the judgment of the circuit court and remanded the cause for a new trial. Beaning v South Bend Electric Co. (1910), 45 Ind.App. 261, 90 N.E. 786. The facts of the case are very fully set out in the opinion of the Appellate Court, supra, and we deem it unnecessary to restate them here. On a second trial the jury returned a verdict in favor of appellee in the sum of $ 8,000, together with answers to a series of interrogatories propounded to it. From a judgment on the general verdict, this appeal is taken.
Each appellant assigns error in the overruling of its motion for judgment on the answers to interrogatories. These answers are over 200 in number and no good purpose will be subserved in setting out even the substance thereof. The electric company contends that they show (1) that appellee was on the pole as a licensee and under such conditions that it owed him no duty which is shown to have been violated; (2) that the failure to insulate its wire was not the proximate cause of the injury; and (3) that appellee was guilty of contributory negligence. As to the first point, appellant is now foreclosed by the decision of the Appellate Court on the first appeal wherein it was held that where a city maintains a police telephone system using the poles of a telephone company, such company, as well as an electric light company whose poles are set in the street under a license from the city, are liable for negligence to a city employe who climbs such poles to repair the city's wires, and receives injuries by coming in contact with their wires. Beaning v. South Bend Electric Co., supra, 272.
As to the second point raised, it is true that the jury, in answer to interrogatory No. 216, found that there was no "practical method of insulating the said wires of the electric company at said time and place that would have prevented the escape of a current of 2,200 volts of electricity into the body of a person coming into contact therewith when such person was otherwise grounded." It must be observed, however, that the failure of the electric company to...
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