Stearns Coal & Lumber Co. v. Tuggle

• Decision Date: 08 January 1914
• Parties: STEARNS COAL & LUMBER CO. et al. v. TUGGLE.
• Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals

161 S.W. 1112

156 Ky. 714

STEARNS COAL & LUMBER CO. et al. v. TUGGLE.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

January 8, 1914

Appeal from Circuit Court, Whitley County.

Action by Ray Tuggle, by next friend, against the Stearns Coal &amp Lumber Company and others. From a judgment for plaintiff defendants appeal. Affirmed.

Sharp &amp Smith, of Williamsburg, for appellants.

Robert Harding and John W. Rawlings, both of Danville, and R. L Pope and R. S. Rose, both of Williamsburg, for appellee.

CARROLL J.

The appellee, Ray Tuggle, at the time he received the injuries complained of, was under 16 years of age and an employé of the appellant company. When injured he was engaged in driving a mule hitched to four loaded coal cars, and was seated on the front end of the front car with his feet hanging over the end. Another loaded train of cars, in charge of a driver named Richmond, had started out of the mine about 25 minutes before Tuggle's train started, but for some reason not very clearly shown in the evidence the first train stopped at a trapdoor at the foot of a heavy grade, and when Tuggle, in the darkness of the mine, first discovered the train of cars standing on the track in front of him, he was only 60 or 70 feet away, and he was unable to stop his train. The mule he was driving, to use the language of Tuggle, "had been in the mine nine or ten years, and he was pretty well up to all the tricks, and had a great deal more experience in working in a mine than I had. And when I first saw Richmond and whistled, the mule just slowed up and sat down on my lap on the front end of the car and held me, and let the trip run up on him, and when the car got to moving up to Richmond, he jumped over the hind car of Richmond's trip to one side, and I moved my left leg as quick as I could out of the way, but did not get my right leg out in time, and got this ankle mashed all to pieces. The mule seen he was going to have to jump or get caught, and he jumped to the right-hand corner of the car." When this experienced mule saw that a collision was inevitable and jumped out of the way to avoid it, the front car on which Tuggle was riding collided with the rear car of Richmond's train, thereby causing the injuries to recover damages for which Tuggle sued, obtaining a judgment for $2,000.

Although several grounds of negligence were charged in the petition it is shown by the record that the case went to the jury upon the ground that Tuggle was under the statutory age, and therefore his employment was unlawful, and that the company was further remiss in failing to furnish him a reasonably safe place and reasonably safe appliances with which to work. We think, however, that the accident was really due to the fact that Richmond stopped his train of cars at the foot of the grade when he should have gone ahead, and, this being so, the negligence in the...