Troutman v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad Co.

• Decision Date: 08 February 1909
• Docket Number: 13,758
• Citation: 95 Miss. 183,48 So. 515
• Parties: ANNA VIRGINIA TROUTMAN v. LOUISVILLE & NASHVILLE RAILROAD COMPANY
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

48 So. 515

95 Miss. 183

ANNA VIRGINIA TROUTMAN v. LOUISVILLE & NASHVILLE RAILROAD COMPANY

No. 13,758

Supreme Court of Mississippi

February 8, 1909

FROM the circuit court of Harrison county, HON. WILLIAM H. HARDY Judge.

Mrs Troutman, appellant, was plaintiff in the court below; the railroad company, appellee, was defendant there. From a judgment in defendant's favor, predicated of a peremptory instruction, the plaintiff appealed to the supreme court.

The plaintiff sued defendant for the alleged wrongful death of her husband, Herman Troutman, who came to his death at Long Beach, a station on defendant's railroad.

The proof shows that the deceased was a passenger on defendant's passenger train which arrived at Long Beach at night; that there were no lights on the platform of the station, except such as came from the car windows; that the floor of the platform was rough and irregular; that when the deceased was last seen before his death, he was standing on the platform of the train preparatory to alighting therefrom that as the train started from the station, and before it had run a car length, the dead body of the deceased was seen lying by the side of the track, with severe bruises on his head and face, and blood was found on the cross-ties supporting the track. There were no eye witnesses to the accident. The defendant denied that the running of its cars was the cause of the death of Troutman but plaintiff contended that the death of her husband was caused by the running of the cars.

Reversed and remanded.

J. J Curtis and J. H. Mize, for appellant.

Herman Troutman, deceased, was a passenger from the city of New Orleans, Louisana, to Long Beach, Mississippi, on defendant's train, on October 27, 1905.

The train arrived at Long Beach after dark. Mr. Troutman was notified by the conductor before the train reached Long Beach that the next station would be his stop; Troutman then got up, picked up his bundles, and walked out of the car. When last seen alive, he was standing on the platform of the train with his two bundles under his arm. A few minutes later, Troutman's body was found lying near the railroad track at the Long Beach station, his feet and part of his body lying on the platform and his head being off the platform and anywhere from six to eighteen inches from the track. The platform was a low platform, about eighteen inches from the ground, upon which passengers alighted from defendant's trains. When found, Troutman had his head crushed; his cheek was bruised; there were bruises on his shoulder and fingers; and two small pieces of bone were found where his body lay. There was blood on the cross-ties near where his body lay, and blood in an oyster shell near his body.

All the witnesses, but one, testified that the train, after leaving Long Beach, had gone but from one car length to one hundred and twenty feet when the cry of "dead man" was raised and the train stopped and the body discovered. One witness, Helm, testified that the train was just pulling out when he saw the dead body. Helm was an employe of defendant. There is no evidence that any eye witness saw deceased when he met his death. There is a conflict as to how long the train on which deceased was a passenger stopped at Long Beach that night to allow passengers to alight. Witness Doty, a prominent lawyer who was on the train, testified that the train stopped scarcely a minute; that the length of time it stopped at the station was hardly perceptible. Other witnesses, for the railroad company, testified that it stopped longer than usual on that occasion.

Defendant endeavored to show that deceased was subject to epileptic fits; had been for several years. The evidence shows that, when he got up to leave the train on the occasion of his death, he was in good spirits and there was nothing wrong with him.

It was dark when the train in question reached Long Beach; defendant had no lights anywhere about the platform to light it; the platform was rough and uneven where the passengers had to alight and the only light on the scene came from the car windows or from the light in the station itself, there being no platform light whatever. Since the accident in question, platform lights have been erected.

If the running of said train did not kill Troutman, then defendant is entitled to a verdict.

Was Troutman killed by the running of said train? It is true that no eye witness saw the actual killing, but the position of the remains, and the condition of the body when found leave no substantial doubt as to his having been killed by the running of the train.

What but the running of the train could have caused his death and left these marks on his body? At any rate, this was a question for the jury to determine. The court, in giving the peremptory instruction for the defendant, undoubtedly assumed that the running of the cars did not kill Troutman, or that, if it did kill him, defendant showed clearly how the accident occured and further showed facts which exculpated it from negligence. This, the court had no right to do, as these were questions for the jury.

If the running of the cars did not kill deceased, what did kill him? He surely did not commit suicide. For a man could not very well commit suicide and smear the rails for several feet with his own blood and extract a couple of his bones and lay them near the track and place himself in the position in which deceased was found. If some one struck him on his head with a club, the bruises on the cheek and shoulder and other bruises cannot be well accounted for, and, besides the time was too short...