Walker v. Atlantic Coastline R. Co., C-71

• Decision Date: 21 June 1960
• Docket Number: No. C-71,C-71
• Parties: Louise WALKER, Appellant, v. ATLANTIC COASTLINE RAILROAD COMPANY, a corporation organized and existing under the laws of the State of Virginia, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 713

121 So.2d 713

Louise WALKER, Appellant, v. ATLANTIC COASTLINE RAILROAD COMPANY, a corporation organized and existing under the laws of the State of Virginia, Appellee.

No. C-71.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.

June 21, 1960.

Williams & Owen, Tallahassee, for appellant.

S. Dilworth Clarke, Monticello, and Kurtz, Toole & Martin, Jacksonville, for appellee.

WIGGINTON, Chief Judge.

This appeal from a summary final judgment of dismissal in favor of defendant-appellee is the second appearance of this case in this court.

On the first appeal the railroad company sought review of a final judgment entered in favor of the plaintiff Walker for damages arising out of a railroad crossing collision. The principal point on appeal questioned the sufficiency of the evidence to support the verdict and judgment. After reviewing the facts disclosed by the record, we observed that verdicts rendered in favor of plaintiffs under facts similar to those here presented have been repeatedly held as a matter of law to be contrary to the manifest weight of the evidence and justice of the cause. Since for that reason the judgment was being reversed and the cause remanded for a new trial, we also considered and discussed on our opinion a second assignment of error relating to an instruction given by the court to the jury. We held the instruction to be erroneous in order that a similar charge would not be given by the court on a retrial of the case. ¹

In the proceedings which followed the going down of our mandate a pre-trial conference was held at which counsel for plaintiff announced that the plaintiff could not produce at another trial of the case evidence in addition to that offered at the first trial, whereupon defendant railroad company renewed its motion for summary judgment. Defendant's motion was granted by a summary final judgment which recited that from the law of the case announced by this court in this opinion of reversal it would be the duty of the circuit court to set aside any verdict which might be rendered for plaintiff upon another trial if the evidence at such new trial was substantially the same as the evidence presented at the former trial; that under these circumstances it would be vain and useless to put the parties and the public to the expense of another trial of the case. The cause was accordingly dismissed and the defendant discharged.

On this appeal it is contended by plaintiff that the trial court erred in rendering a summary final judgment in favor of defendant. Such contention is grounded principally upon the theory that under this court's mandate plaintiff was entitled to a new trial as a matter of right, and the trial court erred in depriving her of this right.

The law of this case as decided on the first appeal is that on the basis of the evidence in the record which was adduced by plaintiff on the first trial of the cause plaintiff had failed to prove her entitlement to the relief sought by her complaint. The verdict rendered in plaintiff's favor was held to be contrary to the manifest weight of the evidence and justice of the cause, and to be insufficient as a matter of law to support a judgment based thereon. Questions of law decided on appeal to a court of last resort must govern the case in the trial court throughout subsequent stages of proceedings in that case, and will seldom be reconsidered or reversed even though they appear to have been erroneous. Whatever is once established...