Southern Railway 8212 Carolina Division v. Hattie Bennett

• Decision Date: 06 April 1914
• Docket Number: No. 796,796
• Citation: 58 L.Ed. 860,34 S.Ct. 566,233 U.S. 80
• Parties: SOUTHERN RAILWAY—CAROLINA DIVISION and Southern Railway Company, Plffs. in Err., v. HATTIE E. BENNETT, Administratrix of the Estate of Luther W. Bennett, Deceased
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

233 U.S. 80

34 S.Ct. 566

58 L.Ed. 860

SOUTHERN RAILWAY—CAROLINA DIVISION and Southern Railway Company, Plffs. in Err.,

v HATTIE E. BENNETT, Administratrix of the Estate of Luther W. Bennett, Deceased.

No. 796.

Argued March 2, 1914.

Decided April 6, 1914.

Messrs. J. E. McDonald, L. E. Jeffries, and B. L. Abney for plaintiffs in error.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 81-84 intentionally omitted] Messrs. W. Boyd Evans, Edwin C. Brandenburg, F. Walter Brandenburg, E. J. Best, G. W. Ragsdale, and P. A. McMaster for defendant in error.

Mr. Justice Holmes delivered the opinion of the court:

This is an action under the employers' liability act of April 22, 1908, chap. 149, 35 Stat. at L. 65, U. S. Comp. Stat. Supp. 1911, p. 1322, for causing the death of the plaintiff's intestate. The plaintiff got a verdict for $25,000, on which the court ordered judgment upon the plaintiff's remitting $5,000. Exceptions were taken, but the judgment was affirmed by the supreme court of the state. 98 S. C. 42, 79 S. E. 710. The exceptions related to the instructions of the court on the matter of liability, and to the entering of judgment upon a verdict alleged to be excessive. As to rulings of the former class, we have indicated that then the statute is made a ground for bringing up ordinary questions of negligence, we shall deal with them in a summary way, and usually content ourselves with stating results. Whether such questions are open in a case coming from a state court we need not decide, as, if open, they can be disposed of in a few words.

The defendant was killed by the falling of his engine through a burning trestle bridge. There was evidence tending to show that the trestle was more or less rotten, that the fire was caused by the dropping of coals from an earlier train, and that the engine might have been stopped had a proper lookout been kept. The first complaint is against an instruction to the effect that, if a servant is injured through defective instrumentalities, it is prima facie evidence of the master's negligence, and that the master 'assumes the burden' of showing that he exercised due care in furnishing them. Of course the burden of proving negligence in a strict sense is on the plaintiff throughout, as was recognized and stated later in the charge. The phrase picked out for criticism did not controvert that proposition, but merely expressed in an untechnical way that, if the death was due to a defective instrumentality and no explanation was given, the plaintiff had sustained the burden. The instruction is criticized further as if the judge had said res ipsa loquitur—which would have been right or wrong according to the res referred to. The judge did not say that the fall of the engine was enough, but that proof of a defect in appliances which the company was bound to use...