Southern Ry. Co. v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co.

• Decision Date: 06 October 1944
• Docket Number: No. 5195.,5195.
• Citation: Southern Ry. Co. v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co., 145 F.2d 304 (4th Cir. 1944)
• Parties: SOUTHERN RY. CO. v. COCA COLA BOTTLING CO.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

145 F.2d 304 (1944)

SOUTHERN RY. CO. v. COCA COLA BOTTLING CO.

No. 5195.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

October 6, 1944.

George H. Ward, of Asheville, N. C., and W. T. Joyner, of Raleigh, N. C. (G. L. Jones, of Asheville, N. C., on the brief), for appellant.

J. Y. Jordan, Jr., of Asheville, N. C. (Jordan & Horner, of Asheville, N. C., on the brief), for appellee.

Before PARKER, SOPER, and DOBIE, Circuit Judges.

DOBIE, Circuit Judge.

The Southern Railway Company (hereinafter called Southern), indemnitee, brought a civil action against the Coca Cola Bottling Company of Asheville (hereinafter called Coca Cola), indemnitor, to recover under the provisions of an indemnity contract. The District Judge directed the jury to find a verdict in favor of Coca Cola and Southern has duly appealed.

Coca Cola, to facilitate its business operations, wished to construct a storage warehouse on Southern's right-of-way at Murphy, North Carolina. Coca Cola naturally desired the location of the warehouse very close to the tracks of Southern so as to make loading of Coca Cola's products on freight-cars simple and easy. Southern, of course, would have preferred a location of the warehouse not too close to the tracks on account of the increased hazard of injuries to employees. After some negotiations between Coca Cola and Southern, engineers of Southern prepared blue-prints fixing the location of the warehouse, and employees of Southern drove stakes into the ground showing exactly where the warehouse was to be situated. And there the warehouse was built.

An elaborate contract, drawn by attorneys for Southern was signed by Coca Cola and Southern. This contract imposed various duties upon Coca Cola in connection with the warehouse and provided for a nominal rental of $15 per year to be paid by Coca Cola. Clause 8 of this contract contained the indemnity provision which forms the basis of the instant litigation.

This clause provides:

"8. That inasmuch as the use by the Licensee of property of the Railway Company in exercise of privilege herein granted may create risks of fire or other loss, injury or damage which would not accrue except for such use, and the Railway Company would not grant said privilege except upon the condition that it shall be protected against any risk so created, the Licensee, in consideration of said privilege and with warranty of its authority so to do, covenants hereby to protect and indemnify the Railway Company and save it wholly harmless from the consequences of any property loss or damage, death or personal injury whatever, accruing or suffered or sustained from or by reason of any act, negligence or default of the licensee, its agents, servants or employees, in or about or in connection with the exercise of the privilege hereby granted, or which may in any manner or to any extent be attributable thereto or to the presence of the warehouse of the Licensee, or contents thereof, on property of the Railway Company, and whether or not negligence on the part of the Railway Company, its servants, or employees, may have caused or contributed to the loss, injury or damage, except that the Licensee shall not be held responsible for any loss of life or personal injury, or damage to cars or property of the Railway Company, accruing from its own negligence, without fault of the Licensee, its servants or employees." (Italics ours.)

G. B. Lackey, a brakeman or flagman in the employ of Southern, while engaged in switching operations on freight cars in motion, was ordered by J. B. Robinson, conductor, to uncouple a car. While engaged in this task, his body struck the warehouse, he was knocked under the car and very badly injured. Lackey instituted a civil action against Southern in the Superior Court of Swain County, North Carolina, which resulted in a judgment in his favor in the amount of $8,500. Southern duly paid this judgment, plus costs of $51.70. The instant action was then instituted by Southern to recover from Coca Cola, under the indemnity provision (above quoted) of the contract, the amount of the judgment and costs paid by Southern in the Lackey suit.

The District Judge held that had the indemnity clause ended with the word "damage", and had the last (and excepting) clause been omitted, Southern would have been entitled to recover against Coca Cola; but the District Judge held that the accident of Lackey fell within this last (excepting) clause of the contract, and the jury, under his direction, brought in a verdict in favor of Coca Cola. While, as the District Judge observed, the question is close and not free from doubt, we think his decision was a correct interpretation of the excepting clause of the contract. We are led to this conclusion by a number of considerations, which we now set out and discuss.

It is Southern's contention that the excepting clause is inapplicable here, since the accident did not result from the negligence of Southern "without fault of the Licensee", because a proximate cause of the instant accident (as was found by the jury in the Lackey suit) was the nearness of the warehouse to the tracks. And, the location of the warehouse was the joint action of both Coca Cola and Southern.

In the principal clause the Coca Cola Company undertakes to indemnify the Railroad Company for the consequences of any loss occasioned by the presence of the building even though the negligence of the railroad may have contributed to the loss. The excepting clause exempts the Coca Cola Company from liability where the loss is due to the negligence of the Railroad Company and the Coca Cola Company is without fault. This means that if a loss is due to the presence of the building and neither party is at fault, the Coca Cola Company is liable; if both are at fault, the Coca Cola Company is still liable; but, if the Railroad Company is negligent and the Coca Cola Company is without fault, the Coca Cola Company is not liable. As the Railroad Company here was admittedly guilty of negligence, the question in the case is whether the Coca Cola Company can be held guilty of fault within the meaning of the contract because of erecting the building at the exact place that the contract provided for it to be erected. This question must be answered in the negative. Fault within the meaning of a contract cannot be predicated upon doing precisely what the contract provides shall be done.

Certainly the excepting clause must have some meaning; it must have been the intention of the parties, by this clause, to exclude some class (or classes) of cases from the broad provisions of the preceding part of the indemnity contract. Counsel for Southern tell us that this excepting clause relieved Coca Cola from liability when the location of the building was not a cause but was a mere condition of the injury. This strikes us as both unduly narrow and extremely technical. If this was the intention of the parties, surely this intention was expressed in inept and general words, when it might have been set out in terms too clear and explicit to be misunderstood.

This contract was drawn by Southern. It was signed, as so drawn, by Coca Cola without the change of a word. When the words of a contract are ambiguous, it is a well known and worthy maxim of our law that such ambiguities should be resolved against the party that drew the contract and selected its terminology and nomenclature. Omnia praesumuntur contra proferentem. Phoenix Ins. Co. v. Slaughter, 12 Wall. 404, 20 L.Ed. 444; Busch v. Midland Finance Corporation, 8 Cir., 64 F.2d 859; Wilkie v. New York Mut. Ins. Co., 146 N.C. 513, 514, 60 S.E. 427; 13 C.J., § 516, p. 544, 17 C.J.S., Contracts, § 324 p. 751.

Two other principles governing the interpretation of contracts, which favor the conclusion we have reached, might also be mentioned. Contracts indemnifying one against the consequences of his own negligence should be rather strictly construed. Buckeye Cotton Oil Co. v. Louisville & N. R. Co., 6 Cir., 24 F.2d 347; Sinclair Prairie Oil Co. v. Thornley, 10 Cir., 127 F.2d 128, 133. And see the language used by Circuit Judge Parker in his dissenting opinion in Cacey v. Virginian R. Co., 4 Cir., 85 F.2d 976. When a particular occurrence falls within a general clause of a contract, and also within the precise terms of a specific provision of the same contract, a presumption arises that the specific (here the excepting clause) provision, rather than the general, is controlling. Deep Vein Coal Co. v. Chicago & E. I. R. Co., 7 Cir., 71 F.2d 963.

No formal estoppel, we think, against Southern can be predicated upon the fact that its engineers determined the exact location of the warehouse. Certainly we must infer that these engineers knew vastly more than bottlers of soft drinks about the hazards involved in the erection of...