Taylor v. Metropolitan St. Ry. Co.

• Decision Date: 07 February 1916
• Docket Number: No. 11808.,11808.
• Citation: 183 S.W. 1129
• Parties: TAYLOR v. METROPOLITAN ST. RY. CO.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

183 S.W. 1129

TAYLOR v. METROPOLITAN ST. RY. CO.

No. 11808.

Kansas City Court of Appeals. Missouri.

February 7, 1916.

Rehearing Denied March 6, 1916.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Jackson County; Thos. J. Seehorn, Judge.

"Not to be officially published."

Suit by Kathryan Taylor against the Metropolitan Street Railway Company. From judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals. Affirmed.

John H. Lucas and Chas. N. Sadler, both of Kansas City, for appellant. Guthrie, Gamble & Street, of Kansas City, for respondent.

JOHNSON, J.

Plaintiff, a married woman 24 years of age, brought this suit March 25, 1910, in the circuit court of Jackson county, to recover damages for personal injuries she alleges she received February 21, 1910, in a collision between two street cars operated by defendant in Kansas City, on one of which plaintiff and a woman companion had just become passengers. The husband of plaintiff, Fay Taylor, also sued at the same time for the damages he sustained in consequence of his wife's injuries, and the two cases, after the pleadings were made up, were allowed by both plaintiffs and defendant to be continued from term to term until February 24, 1914, when Mrs. Taylor's case was tried, resulting in a verdict and a judgment for her in the sum of $4,500. Two or three weeks later, the husband's case was tried in another division of the court and resulted in a verdict and judgment for him for $3,000. Defendant appealed both cases, and they were set for hearing, argued, and submitted on the same day. The two are very similar, and our decision of the questions in the wife's case will dispose of the important questions in the other, in which a brief separate opinion is filed at this time. 183 S. W. 1133. The answer is a general denial, but the facts are conceded that plaintiff had become a passenger of defendant and was passing from the rear vestibule to the body of the car she had just boarded, when a rear end collision occurred which broke all the glass in the vestibule windows and wrought other serious damage to structural parts.

The principal issues of fact contested at the trial were whether or not plaintiff sustained any but the most trifling physical injuries, and, if she did, whether or not they were of the serious nature and permanent character her evidence describes. A bit of glass from a shattered window pane lodged in one of her eyes, but this injury was inconsequential, and the eye quickly healed after the removal of the fragment. It is not claimed that this small hurt was a factor in the production of the greater injury which the evidence of plaintiff tends to show she sustained as a direct, but somewhat slowly manifested, effect of the collision. That injury is ascribed to a mental and nervous shock so profound that it transformed a normal, healthy woman of a contented mind and cheerful disposition into a melancholic neurotic, who became a prey to frequent and repulsive nervous explosions and to horrible fears and hallucinations. On the other hand, the evidence of defendant tends to show that plaintiff was suffering from extreme nervousness before the collision, and that any subsequent aggravation of her disorder was due, not to shock caused by the collision, but to the strain and excitement induced by two weeks of continuous revelry and dissipation in Kansas City following the collision which occurred at the beginning of her first visit to that city. Plaintiff had been married two years and had lived in Vernon county with her husband, who had been employed as a farmer and common laborer on a railroad. They had no children, and their home was in Deerfield, a small village. They had lived for a time on a farm where her husband was employed as a hand and she as housekeeper, during which service her evidence shows she had done the work of a farmer's wife and apparently had enjoyed good health. Afterward they removed to Nevada, where the husband worked as a section hand, and plaintiff clerked in a millinery shop conducted by a Mrs. Seaschultz. She was thus employed when Mrs. Seaschultz accompanied her to Kansas City to secure temporary employment for her in a millinery establishment where she would be taught the art of hat trimming. On their way from the Union Station to the home of a sister-in-law of Mrs. Seaschultz on Fifteenth street, they transferred to a Fifteenth street car at Eighth street and Grand avenue which had stopped at the regular stopping place on the south side of Eighth street. They entered the rear vestibule, handed their transfers to the conductor, and were proceeding into the car, when a car turning from Grand avenue to go east on Eighth street violently struck the rear end of their car, with the results we have stated. Mrs. Seaschultz was hurt and was assisted into a nearby drug store. Plaintiff states that she was frightened and felt "stunned like," but she exhibited no outward signs of nervous shock. She and Mrs. Seaschultz were taken in a carriage to the home of Mrs. Graham, the sister-in-law of Mrs. Seaschultz, and shortly after their arrival plaintiff began to feel ill effects from the shock she had received. Her eye became inflamed and pained her; but, apart from this, a general condition of soreness in the head and back developed. The doctor who was called in to treat Mrs Seaschultz removed the fragment of glass from plaintiff's eye, relieving that injury, and concluded that otherwise she was not injured. She remained a week at Mrs. Graham's without marked change in her general condition, and then returned to Deerfield, stopping off at Nevada to change cars. Friends who cared for her at Nevada and assisted her to the Deerfield train testified that she appeared to suffer great pain in her head and back, and that she did not notice her friends and seemed dazed and melancholy. Both eyes were bloodshot. She acted strangely, and apparently did not realize what she was doing or where she was going. Her husband met her at Deerfield and took her to his father's house, where she remained until the second week in March, when she went with her husband to live on a farm, were he had arranged for employment as a farm hand. Her sister went with them and performed the household labor she had been expected to do. While at Deerfield her condition grew worse, and on the farm she became subject to nervous attacks of the most violent and distressing character. It...