The Union Pacific Railroad Company v. Luck

• Decision Date: 12 January 1909
• Docket Number: 15,758
• Citation: 79 Kan. 320,100 P. 278
• Parties: THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY v. JOHN A. LUCK
• Court: Kansas Supreme Court

100 P. 278

79 Kan. 320

THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY v. JOHN A. LUCK

No. 15,758

Supreme Court of Kansas

January 12, 1909

Decided January, 1909.

Error from Ellsworth district court; ROLLIN R. REES, judge.

Judgment reversed.

SYLLABUS

SYLLABUS BY THE COURT.

RAILROADS--Injury to Passenger--Negligent Operation of Train--Evidence. The plaintiff, a passen ger on one of the defendant's trains, desired to stop at the station of Carneiro. After the train left the last station before Carneiro a train employee announced that Carneiro would be the next stop. Soon afterward the train stopped a half mile or more from the station, where there were no facilities for the discharge of passengers. It was night, very dark, and raining very hard. The plaintiff could not see where he was and undertook to leave the train. While he was in the act of swinging to the ground from the lowest step of his car the train started, and he was precipitated into a ditch beside the track and injured. Accepting all the plaintiff's evidence as true it is held that negligence on the part of the defendant was not established.

R. W. Blair, H. A. Scandrett, and B. W. Scandrett, for plaintiff in error.

A. M. Harvey, for defendant in error.

OPINION

BURCH, J.:

The plaintiff sued the defendant for damages resulting from a personal injury alleged to have been occasioned by the defendant's negligence, and recovered. The defendant prosecutes error, claiming that the evidence adduced on the trial does not show negligence in respect to the matters of which complaint is made.

The substance of the petition is that plaintiff was a passenger on a passenger-train running west from Salina. His destination was Carneiro. Before Carneiro was reached that station was called, and shortly afterward the train stopped. Believing he had arrived at the end of his journey, the plaintiff undertook to leave the train. The night was so dark and stormy he could not see where he was. The train started without warning, as he was in the act of alighting, and he was precipitated into a ditch beside the track and was hurt. The train had stopped a mile from the station. The defendant was negligent in calling the stop, in stopping the train soon after the call, away from the station, where no facilities for alighting were provided, in permitting the plaintiff to alight at an unsafe place, and in starting the train without warning.

The plaintiff says that after the train left Brookville, the last station before Carneiro, a brakeman called out, "The next stop is Carneiro," and that afterward the call was made that way again. None of the witnesses except the plaintiff heard more than one announcement, but all of them express it in the same language, and it is impossible to interpret what was said as a warning that the train was about to stop at Carneiro or was about to stop at all. The court is not disposed to parley over the quiddit whether a notification of this character should use the word "station" or the word "stop." The plaintiff does not claim that he was alert to note the sometime difference in signification between the two words. The meaning of such an announcement is well understood, and the one made in this case was not misunderstood at the time. All that occurred was that persons aboard were apprised that the next place for the discharge of passengers would be Carneiro, so that those intending to stop there might have an opportunity to prepare at leisure and with care and comfort to leave the train when it reached that place. The plaintiff says he was ignorant of the rules of the defendant respecting the announcement of stations and does not claim that he was misled because the call was repeated. The train was an excursion train. The cars were crowded. People were riding in the vestibules. The plaintiff says he does not think the brakeman making the call could get through his car. The passengers were noisy. Young people were moving about and were laughing, talking, singing, calling out to each other and having fun generally, and the repetition of the same announcement in the same way indicates care and not negligence. Although the plaintiff was misled by the fact that the train stopped soon after the announcement, the defendant was guilty of no breach of duty in making the announcement as it did.

The next question is, Was the defendant negligent in stopping the train so soon after the announcement was made? Here there is an entire failure of proof. The plaintiff merely proved that the train stopped a half mile or more from the station, when there were no facilities for alighting. He made no effort to show the cause of the event. Incidentally a plausible explanation of the stop did appear, which the court recognized in submitting the case to the jury. The night was pitch-dark, and it was raining very hard. All the witnesses emphasize these conditions, and the plaintiff says he could not see the ground when he attempted to alight. When the train stopped the conductor stepped to the ground with his lantern. The light from the lantern fell upon a mile-post, which revealed the...