The Ga. R.R. v. Friddell

• Decision Date: 31 October 1887
• Citation: 79 Ga. 489
• Parties: The Georgia Railroad and Banking Company. vs. Friddell.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

79 Ga. 489

The Georgia Railroad and Banking Company. vs. Friddell.

Supreme Court of the State of Georgia

OCTOBER TERM, 1887.

Railroads. Damages. Negligence. Master and Servant. Before Judge Marshall J. Clarke. Fulton Superior Court. March Term, 1887.

Reported in the decision.

J. B. Gumming; Hillyer & Bro.; A. H. Cox; Henry Jackson, for plaintiff in error.

Hulsey & Bateman, for defendant.

Bleckley, Chief Justice.

Friddell was an employe of the Georgia Railroad Company as a switchman, his business being to change the switches in the city, and give signals to moving engines and trains on the Georgia railroad. While so engaged, and, we may assume, under the evidence, without any fault on his part, he sustained a personal injury on account of the negligence of the employes of the Richmond & Danville Railroad Company, they being in the exercise of the chartered rights of the Atlanta & Charlotte Air-Line Railway Company, or perhaps, the Richmond & Atlanta Air-Line Railway Company. At all events, they had char tered rights to enter the city, and this was the common terminus of the two companies. Their track, for some distance, ran parallel to the Georgia railroad, and upon it was situated a cotton compress, and on the Georgia railroad, or rather, on one of its side-tracks, there was another. By some arrangement between the two companies, there was a mutual interchange of tracks for the purpose of reaching these compresses and procuring freights from them, loading and unloading, etc. On this occasion, the Richmond & Danville train had gone on the Georgia railroad sideling to receive cotton from the compress located on that sideling; and coming up on the main line of the Georgia railroad, after transacting its business at the compress, the employes, by their negligence, injured Friddell, who wasattending to his duties in connection with a locomotive, and perhaps a train in sight, belonging to the Georgia Railroad Company, his employer. He brought an action against his own company for the injury which the other company had inflicted, and the theory of his action is, that his company, being the proprietor of the track over which the other company was running its trains when the injury occurred, is liable to him for the negligence of the employes of the other company when using that track, just as it would be for the negligence of its own employés. He recovered a verdict, and a motion for a new trial made by the Georgia Railroad Company was denied. Under that...