The Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis And Chicago Railroad Co. v. Cooper

• Decision Date: 30 October 1889
• Docket Number: 13,500
• Parties: The Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Chicago Railroad Company v. Cooper, Administrator
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

22 N.E. 340

120 Ind. 469

The Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Chicago Railroad Company v. Cooper, Administrator

No. 13,500

Supreme Court of Indiana

October 30, 1889

From the Bartholomew Circuit Court.

Judgment affirmed.

S Stansifer, for appellant.

G. W Cooper and C. S. Baker, for appellee.

OPINION

Elliott, C. J.

The material facts stated in the second paragraph of the appellee's complaint are these: On the 18th day of April 1885, Uriah Holland, the appellee's intestate, entered a train of the appellants, which carried both passengers and freight, at the city of Columbus, and paid his passage to the town of Hope, a regular station on the line of appellant's road. When the train, on which the intestate was a passenger, reached the station of Lambert, a point between the city of Columbus and the town of Hope, the appellant's employees failed and neglected to announce the name of the station, but some one in the car called out "Hope," as if naming the station. After the train had stopped at Lambert, the intestate, believing it to be the station for which he had taken passage, endeavored to alight from the train in the usual manner, and the employees of the appellant, without giving any warning or notice, carelessly and negligently caused the train to be suddenly started, and the intestate, without any fault on his part, was thrown violently from the platform of the car, on which he was standing, to the track. The fall rendered him unconscious, and of this the appellant had knowledge, as well as of its cause. Soon after the occurrence, and while the intestate was upon the appellant's track in a dazed and partially unconscious condition, at a point seventy rods distant from Lambert, the appellant's employees in charge of a passenger train, and having knowledge of the fact of his fall from the train and his condition in time to have avoided injury to him by the exercise of ordinary care, negligently and without giving any signal or warning of the approach of the train, or taking any precaution to avoid injuring him, caused the passenger train to run upon him, thus causing his death, without any fault or negligence on his part.

If the intestate had been on the track through no fault of the appellant and without knowledge on its part of his condition, no action could be maintained; but he was on the track through the fault of the appellant, and it did know of his condition. The rule applicable to cases where persons trespass on the company's track can not govern in such a case as this. Even if it should be conceded that there was no breach of duty on the part of the appellant in failing to announce the station, still there was negligence in starting the train with a sudden jerk. Louisville, etc., R. R. Co. v. Crunk, 119 Ind. 542, 21 N.E. 31; Indianapolis, etc., R. R. Co. v. Horst, 93 U.S. 291, 23 L.Ed. 898; Doss v. Missouri, etc., R. R. Co., 59 Mo. 27; Andrist v. Union Pacific R. W. Co., 30 F. 345. But we might go further and concede that there was no negligence in starting the train, and still we should be required to hold that a cause of action is stated, inasmuch as the fact that the intestate was known to have been thrown to the track in an effort to alight from the train and rendered unconscious, made it the duty of the appellant to use care to prevent injury to him from its own trains. A railway carrier of passengers has no right, where care and diligence can prevent it, to leave a helpless passenger, who has fallen from one of its trains, in a situation of known danger. If a passenger, without fault on his part or that of the carrier, but as the result of a pure accident, should be thrown from a train upon the track and rendered helpless, it would be the duty of the railway carrier, if the facts were known to it, to use proper care and diligence to prevent injury from passing trains.

The appellant was bound to know that trains were running upon its own road, and it was under a duty to the passenger who was thrown upon its track to take steps to prevent injury to him from the danger which it knew he was likely to incur from its trains. It does not matter that the injury which actually occurred was not foreseen, it is enough that it was such as might naturally result. Billman v. Indianapolis, etc., R. R. Co., 76 Ind. 166; Dunlap v. Wagner, 85 Ind. 529 (44 Am. Rep. 42); Louisville, etc., R. W. Co. v. Wood, 113 Ind. 544, 14 N.E. 572 (566), and cases cited; Hill v. Winsor, 118 Mass. 251; Lane v. Atlantic Works, 111 Mass. 136. "It is not necessary," said the court in Hill v. Winsor, supra, "that injury in the precise form in which it in fact resulted should have been foreseen." It needs no argument to demonstrate the truth of the proposition that danger must be presumed from passing trains if one in a state of bewilderment is left upon the track. A long line of cases affirm that one who goes upon a track even with mental and physical faculties undiminished is in fault, because he enters a place of danger, and the one who wrongfully puts another in such a place does a wrong, and is precluded from averring that the injured person was where he had no right to be. Here the carrier knowingly left its passenger upon the track, knowing, also, that injury from a fall from its train had impaired his mental faculties, and it can not be held blameless and its passenger declared a trespasser.

The wrong of the carrier in leaving its injured passenger on the track exposed to great and known peril, without mind enough to care for himself, was the proximate cause of his death. The case is stronger, not weaker, in the fact that those in charge of the train which ran upon him were informed as to his misfortune and his injury; for the two acts of negligence combined in one efficient cause, and the effect which might naturally have been expected did, in fact, result. The concurring wrongs blended in one strong unity, producing a legal tort, for which the wrong-doer must make compensation. Evansville, etc., R. R. Co. v. Crist, 116 Ind. 446, 19 N.E. 310; Indianapolis, etc., R. W. Co. v. Pitzer, 109 Ind. 179, 6 N.E. 310.

If, as counsel tacitly assume, it were true that Holland's misfortune was due solely to his own wrong in voluntarily becoming intoxicated, we should have a very different case. We should, if such were the case, hold the paragraph of the complaint in which appears the statement that he was intoxicated to be insufficient. This we should do, for the reason that we are satisfied that a carrier is not bound to protect a drunken man from the consequences which result from his own folly or wrong. Welty v Indianapolis, etc., R. R. Co., 105 Ind. 55, 4 N.E. 410; McClelland v. Louisville, etc., R. W. Co., 94 Ind. 276; Louisville, etc., R. R. Co. v. Sullivan, 81 Ky. 624. But a drunken man is not an outcast, and the railway carrier can not negligently suffer harm to come to him while he is a passenger. It owes him some duty, which, at its peril, it must not omit. It is not to answer for his folly, but for its own breach of duty. Atchison, etc., R. R. Co. v. Weber, 33 Kan. 543 (52 Am. Rep....