St. Louis, I. M. & S. Ry. Co. v. Inman
| Decision Date | 04 February 1907 |
| Parties | ST. LOUIS, I. M. & S. RY. CO. v. INMAN. |
| Court | Arkansas Supreme Court |
Appeal from Circuit Court, White County; H. N. Hutton, Judge.
Action by Matilda Inman, administratrix of L. H. Inman, deceased, against the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railway Company. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals. Reversed, and remanded for new trial.
B. S. Johnson and S. D. Campbell, for appellant. S. Brundidge, Jr., and J. W. & M. House, for appellee.
Matilda Inman, as administratrix of L. H. Inman, deceased, brought this action against the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railway Company to recover damages occasioned by the death of her intestate. She alleged in her complaint that L. H. Inman was, on the 12th day of September, 1904, a bridge carpenter and was in the employment of the defendant, and that one J. A. Woodall was the foreman of a gang of men with which he was working at that time, and on that day, while working under such foreman on a bridge of the defendant across the Ouachita river, near Arkadelphia, another gang, of which Frank Marrs was foreman, willfully and negligently cut the bolts and supports of an iron beam in the bridge, and thereby caused the same to fall upon and kill Inman; that deceased left plaintiff, Matilda Inman, his widow, and two children, Fred Inman, aged 20 years, and Anna Inman, aged 13 years, him surviving.
The defendant answered and denied the allegations in the complaint, and alleged that the death of Inman was caused by his own contributory negligence, and was the result of, and incident to, his employment, and within the risks and hazards assumed by him.
The following facts were shown by the evidence adduced in the trial before a jury in this action: On the 11th of September, 1904, a freight train of the defendant broke through and wrecked a span of the bridge across the Ouachita river near Arkadelphia. Immediately all available gangs of workmen in the employment of the defendant, and they were many, were called to remove the wreckage and repair the broken span, each gang having a foreman. But the superintendence of this work was under S. H. Busby, and all worked as one gang under him. On the 12th day of September, 1904, while Inman, who was a bridge carpenter and a member of one of the gangs, was engaged in this work, and while he was taking measurements for the purpose of repairing the bridge, other men were cutting rivets and taking away parts of the wreckage of the span as fast as possible. This span, before the wreck, was supported by two large rock piers some distance apart, and when the freight train broke through the span there were portions of the broken span left so that, while parts of the freight train and of the wrecked span rested against one corner of the pier, there was, as to that part of the pier opposite, a distance in the clear, between the wreckage and the north side of the south rock pier, of from two to five feet — at least such clear space sufficient for a man to ascend or descend a rope between the wreckage and the pier. This pier was about 20 feet high, about 18 feet wide at the top, about 5 or 6 feet thick at the top, and all dimensions increasing towards the base (or "flaring" as termed by the witnesses). There was a rope fastened to one of the ties at the top of the pier and hanging down to the base so that it could be turned in any manner as to the pier — on the north side between the pier and the wreckage or alongside the shortest diameter of the pier on either side, or on the north side of the pier (its longest diameter) being the opposite side from the wreckage. This rope, for a part of the time, was suspended on one side and a part of the time on the other. When Inman descended it the last time it was hanging between the wreckage and the north side of the south pier. It had been used indiscriminately by persons ascending and descending. Who changed it from one side of the pier to the other, or why the change was made, the evidence does not show. But it does show that it was used by different people, and that some, in descending, came down until the wreckage was reached and then got on that to work, or to go down to the bottom, while others would continue on the rope to the end. The wreckage stood with the distance from two to five feet between it and the pier, as before stated, from some time early in the night of the 11th of September, 1904, until about 2 o'clock in the afternoon of the next day, when the wreckage gave way while Inman was descending the rope between it and the pier, about half way down, and fell against him. The cause of the fall was the cutting of the rivets or bolts which held the wreckage together, by the men engaged in that work. A severe injury was inflicted upon Inman by the...
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