Trinity & B. V. Ry. Co. v. Blackshear

• Court: Texas Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: Brown
• Citation: Trinity & B. V. Ry. Co. v. Blackshear, 172 S.W. 544, 106 Tex. 515 (Tex. 1915)
• Decision Date: 13 January 1915
• Docket Number: (No. 2734.)
• Parties: TRINITY & B. V. RY. CO. v. BLACKSHEAR.

Page 544

172 S.W. 544

TRINITY & B. V. RY. CO. v. BLACKSHEAR.

(No. 2734.)

Supreme Court of Texas.

January 13, 1915.

Error to Court of Civil Appeals of Fifth Supreme Judicial District.

Action by C. M. Blackshear against the Trinity & Brazos Valley Railway Company. Judgment for plaintiff was affirmed by Court of Civil Appeals (161 S. W. 395), and defendant brings error. Judgment reversed, and judgment entered for defendant.

N. H. Lassiter and Robt. Harrison, both of Ft. Worth, and Morrow & Morrow, of Hillsboro, for plaintiff in error. H. B. Porter, Walter Collins, and Shurtleff & Cummings, all of Hillsboro, and W. F. Ramsey and C. L. Black, both of Austin, for defendant in error.

BROWN, C. J.

The plaintiff in error constructed its road through a farm in Hill county (the name of the owner is not important), and was operating its trains thereon at the time the injury complained of occurred. There is evidence from which a jury might conclude that within the limits of the said farm the spikes which held the rails to the ties of the railroad track were in many instances loose, and in some instances they were lying upon the ground.

Defendant in error, Blackshear, was employed by the owner of the farm as a hand, and was engaged in plowing at the time at a point near to the railroad track. A freight train upon the railroad track passed by him at unusual rapid speed, and just as it passed something struck Blackshear in the side and caused the injury complained of. Blackshear was at the time about 50 feet from the railroad track. From the injury received in his side Blackshear was confined to his bed and room for about two weeks, and, when he was able to do so, he went back to the place at which he was plowing and where he was standing at the time he received the blow, and he found near there on the ground an iron spike such as was used on the railroad track, and he believed it was the spike that struck him and caused his injury.

The spike being negligently permitted to be upon the track of the railroad, or loose in the ties, the railroad company would be responsible for injury proximately caused by such negligence which, in the exercise of reasonable diligence, the railroad company might have foreseen might result therefrom. Railway Co. v. Bigham, 90 Tex. 223, 38 S. W. 162.

In the case cited, Chief Justice Gaines, in his usual thorough manner, examined and discussed this question, and announced the rule to be:

"But we are not prepared to hold that in no case can the original cause of the injury be deemed the proximate cause, where an independent and disconnected agency has supervened and brought about the result. The fact of the intervention of an independent agency, it occurs to us, bears more directly upon the question whether the injury ought, under all the circumstances, to have been foreseen; and, where this latter fact appears, we think that the original negligent act ought to be deemed actionable. In Seale v. Railway Co., 65 Tex. 274, 57 Am. Rep. 602, Chief Justice Willie says: `If the...