Spring Valley Coal Co. v. Patting

• Decision Date: 23 June 1904
• Citation: 71 N.E. 371,210 Ill. 342
• Parties: SPRING VALLEY COAL CO. v. PATTING.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

210 Ill. 342

71 N.E. 371

SPRING VALLEY COAL CO.

v.PATTING.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

June 23, 1904.

Appeal from Appellate Court, First District.

Action by Alexander Patting against the Spring Valley Coal Company. There was a judgment of the Appellate Court affirming a judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.A. R. Greenwood and Henry S. Robbins, for appellant.

James W. Duncan, J. D. Springer, C. Le Roy Brown, and Walter A. Panneck, for appellee.

HAND, J.

This is an appeal from a judgment of the Appellate Court for the First District affirming a judgment for $10,000 recovered by the appellee against the appellant in the circuit court of Cook county for a personal injury sustained by the appellee while in the employ of the appellant as a coal miner. The declaration contained a number of counts, and in various forms alleged a willful violation of the mines and miners' act (2 Starr & C. Ann. St. 1896, p. 2716, c. 93) by the appellant, in failing to provide a sufficient brake with which to control the cage upon which the appellee was being lowered to the bottom of its shaft at the time of his injury, whereby said cage fell and he was injured; also in failing to furnish a sufficient light at the bottom of its shaft, down which the appellee was being lowered at the time he was injured, to enable him to get off the cage with safety, whereby he was injured; also charged appellant with negligence, as at common law, in so carelessly, negligently, and recklessly operating its machinery that it lost control of the cage upon which appellee was being lowered into its mine, by means whereof the cage, with appellee thereon, was precipitated to the bottom of its shaft, whereby he was injured.

The accident occurred on the morning of November 24, 1893, while appellee and a number of other coal miners were being lowered by appellant into its mine for the purpose of mining coal, upon a cage operated in a shaft 360 feet deep. There was no light at the bottom of the shaft, and the only light in the shaft was that furnished by the miners' lamps. The machinery for operating the brake which controlled the speed of the cage failed to work, and the cage dropped to the bottom of the shaft. The lamps of the miners became extinguished. Appellee was thrown from the cage at the bottom of the shaft. The cage, which weighed, with the men thereon, something like 3,500 pounds, rebounded, and the appellee, while attempting in the darkness to save himself from injury, got one of his legs beneath the cage, and his leg was so crushed that it became necessary to amputate the same, and he was otherwise injured. It is undisputed that the failure of the brake which controlled the speed of the cage to work was due to the fact that the engineer did not expel from the engine which operated the brake the cold water produced by the condensation of steam during the time the engine had been standing idle, as was his custom and duty to do before attempting to lower the cage.

A suit upon the same cause of action was, prior to the bringing of this suit, brought by the appellee against the appellant in the United States Circuit Court for the Northern District of Illinois, wherein he recovered a verdict and judgment for the sum of $10,000, which judgment, on appeal to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, was reversed, and a new trial granted. 86 Fed. 433, 30 C. C. A. 168. The case was redocketed in the United States Circuit Court, and, when it was called for trial, the plaintiff not appearing, the court impaneled a jury to try the case, which jury, under the direction of the court, returned a verdict of not guilty, upon which verdict a judgment was rendered in favor of the defendant. 93 Fed. 98. Upon writ of error the United States Circuit Court of Appeals reversed said judgment (98 Fed. 811, 39 C. C. A. 308), and, in accordance with the mandate of that court, the United States Circuit Court set aside the judgment rendered upon the verdict of not guilty, and dismissed the suit for want of prosecution, and within a few days thereafter appellee began this suit. The defendant pleaded not guilty and the statute of limitations. The appellee filed a replication to the plea of the statute, setting up the pendency of the cause of action in the United States Circuit Court, and the disposition thereof, to which replication the court overruled a demurrer; and, no exception having been taken to the ruling of the court in that regard, the action of the court in overruling said demurrer is not raised in this court.

It is first contended as a ground for reversal in this court that the decision of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals constitutes an estoppel by verdict upon the question of the right of appellee to recover in this case against the appellant upon the ground of the negligence of the engineer of the appellant in failing to expel from the brake engine the cold water produced by the condensation of steam during the time the engine had been standing idle, as was his custom and duty to do before attempting to lower said cage into the mine, on the ground that the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, when the case was therein pending, held, as a matter of law, that the appellee and the engineer of the appellant were fellow servants, and there could be no recovery by appellee against appellant on the ground of the negligence of said engineer, by reason of the fact that such relation existed between them at the time the appellee was injured. We do not agree with this contention, as the law is well settled that an estoppel by verdict can be based only upon a final judgment, and the judgment of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals reversing the judgment of the United States Circuit Court and granting a new trial, and the nonsuit which followed, was not a final judgment.

In the case of City of Aurora v. West, 7 Wall. 82, 19 L. Ed. 42, Mr. Justice Clifford, speaking for the court, said: ‘Unless a final judgment or decree is rendered in a suit, the proceedings in the same are never regarded as a bar to a subsequent action. Consequently, where the action was discontinued or the plaintiff became nonsuit, or where, from any other cause, except, perhaps, in the case of a retraxit, no judgment or decree was rendered in the case, the proceedings are not conclusive.’

In Bucher v. Cheshire Railroad Co., 125 U. S. 555, 8 Sup. Ct. 974, 31 L. Ed. 795, an action at law was brought in the United States Circuit Court for the District of Massachusetts for damages for injuries sustained by the plaintiff through defendant's negligence while a passenger on its railway. Plaintiff had previously brought a similar action in a state court in Massachusetts, where he recovered judgment, which was reversed, on appeal, by the Supreme Court of that state, and the cause was remanded for a new trial; it being held in that court that at the time of his injury plaintiff was traveling in violation of the Sunday laws, which barred a recovery. Afterward the plaintiff became nonsuit, and instituted the second action in the United States Circuit Court. On the trial in the latter court the defendant invoked the judgment of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts on the Sunday law as an estoppel. The United States Circuit Court held that the same question having been submitted to the jury in the trial in the state court, and having been passed upon by the Supreme Court of the state it did not consider there was evidence sufficient to go to the jury upon that subject. The action of the court in that regard was assigned as error in the United States Supreme Court. That court, in disposing of such assignment, said: ‘Upon this point we are of opinion that the court below ruled correctly. It is not a matter of estoppel which bound the parties in the court below, because there was no judgment entered in the case in which the ruling of the state court was made; and we do not place the correctness of the determination of the Circuit Court in refusing to permit this question to go to the jury upon the ground that it was a point decided between the parties, and therefore res judicata as between them in the present action, but upon the ground that the Supreme Court of the state, in its decision, had given such a construction to the meaning of the word ‘charity’ and ‘necessity’ in the statute as to clearly show that the evidence offered upon that subject was not sufficient to prove that the plaintiff was traveling for either of those purposes.'

In Gardner v. Michigan Central Railroad Co., 150 U. S. 349, 14 Sup. Ct. 140, 37 L. Ed. 1107, the plaintiff, an employé of the defendant, sued the defendant in an action at law for damages occasioned by the alleged negligence of the defendant. He had previously brought a similar action in the state court in Michigan, where he recovered judgment, which on appeal was reversed by the Supreme Court of Michigan, and a new trial granted, on the grounds that, upon the facts proved, plaintiff was guilty of contributory negligence, and that the negligence...