Walter Brooks v. Mississippi Cotton Oil Co.

• Decision Date: 03 April 1899
• Citation: 76 Miss. 874,25 So. 479
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: WALTER BROOKS v. MISSISSIPPI COTTON OIL CO

25 So. 479

76 Miss. 874

WALTER BROOKS v. MISSISSIPPI COTTON OIL CO

Supreme Court of Mississippi

April 3, 1899

March 1899

FROM the circuit court of Washington county, HON. F. A MONTGOMERY, Judge.

Walter Brooks, the appellant, was the plaintiff in the court below the Mississippi Cotton Oil Company, a corporation, was defendant there. The plaintiff was a servant of defendant corporation and, in December, 1897, was injured, as the evidence tended to show, by the negligence of a fellow-servant in the same common employment; and there was also evidence tending to show that the injury was caused, or contributed to, by defects in the machinery, floor, ways and appliances furnished plaintiff by defendant, of which defects it appeared the plaintiff had notice before his injury. Upon the trial of the case, an action for damages suffered, the court below gave a peremptory instruction requiring the jury to find for the defendant; a verdict having been returned in accordance therewith and judgment entered thereon for defendant, the plaintiff Brooks appealed to the supreme court.

Reversed and remanded.

J. H Wynn, for appellant.

The appellee contended in the court below that the knowledge of the appellant of the defects in the machinery exculpated it; but, when met with the act of 1896, chapter 87, providing that "knowledge by an employe of the defective or unsafe character or condition of any machinery, ways or appliances, etc., shall not be a defense, " the appellee contended that this chapter applied only to railroad corporations. This contention is hardly worth argument. The code section (3559) was limited to railroad employes, but the act of 1896 applies to "every employe of any corporation." The language of the statute is plain and unambiguous, and when this is the case, as said in Sutherland on Statutory Const., p. 210, sec. 234, "a bare reading suffices; intepretation is needless." Kock v. Bridges, 45 Miss. 259; United States v. Hartwell, 6 Wall, 296.

The act of 1896, chapter 87, makes corporations liable for injuries resulting from the negligence of a superior, or persons having the control or direction of the services of a person injured, and provides that an employe shall have the same rights and remedies as persons not employes. This act is virtually the same as the English "fellow-servant act, " an act found in many of the states; and the construction is, as said in Whittaker's Smith on Neg., 81, that the defense of a fellow-servant shall not be raised; and in McKinney on Fellow-servants, 221, note 1, it is averred that this evidently means only that the defense of common employment shall not be available for the master.

Miller, Smith & Hirsh, for appellee.

The appellee asked for and obtained a peremptory instruction upon the theory that § 3559 of the code, even although amended by the acts of 1896, p. 97, and by the acts of 1988 p. 84, is applicable only to employes of railroad corporations, and does not embrace any other class of employes, whose rights are left as at common law, as construed by our courts in numerous decisions, principally railroad cases. An examination of § 3559 of code discloses the fact that it is part of the chapter upon railroads and indubitably applied only to railroad employes, as shown by its language; in fact it is nothing more nor less than a copy of section 193 of the constitution, leaving off the last sentence in said section 193. The act of 1896 leaves out the word "railroad" after the word "any" in the first sentence, but does not change the substance of section 3559 in any particular except to show that the legislature was still acting with reference to railroad employes, by adding the words "or for the improper loading of cars" after the word "appliances." The act of March 1896 was passed solely for the purpose of consolidating the right of action in one person and changing the rule as it existed prior to the passage of this act. The act of 1898 was passed for the purpose of saving suits that were pending in the courts at the time that the act of 1896 was passed, it having been held, as the members of the legislature were informed, that the effect of the passage of the act of 1896, consolidating rights of action, abated or took away the right altogether which then existed in certain suits then pending. If the word "railroad" had been retained in the section as amended by the act of 1896-1898 there could not be the slightest doubt on earth about what was the intention of the legislature. We submit that simply leaving out the word "railroad" out of these acts of 1896-1898, but at...