Western & A.R. Co. v. Beason
| Decision Date | 24 January 1901 |
| Citation | 37 S.E. 863,112 Ga. 553 |
| Parties | WESTERN & A. R. CO. v. BEASON. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Syllabus by the Court.
1. A defense established by the positive and uncontradicted testimony of unimpeached witnesses cannot lawfully be arbitrarily disregarded.
2. The trial court erred in admitting, as a part of the res gestæ of the casualty under investigation, a narrative given by the plaintiff's deceased husband touching the manner in which he was injured.
Error from city court of Atlanta; A. E. Calhoun, Judge.
Action by Ada A. Beason against the Western & Atlantic Railroad Company. Judgment for plaintiff. Defendant brings error. Reversed.
Payne & Tye, for plaintiff in error.
C. T Ladson and C. T. Hopkins, for defendant in error.
Mrs Ada A. Beason obtained a verdict against the Western & Atlantic Railroad Company for the homicide of her husband. The company excepted to a judgment overruling its motion for a new trial. This motion contained many grounds, but, in the view we take of the case, it is unnecessary to deal specifically with all of them. Under the evidence as it appears in the record, the plaintiff was not, in our judgment, entitled to recover. We shall accordingly confine ourselves to a discussion of this proposition, and of a question presented in two of the grounds of the motion for a new trial relating to the admission of evidence. The remaining grounds relate to matters which will not probably arise on another trial, or present questions of law which are well settled. While some of the rulings with respect to these matters were not strictly correct, there were no errors, save those dealt with in the headnotes, which would have called for the granting of a new trial.
1. The material facts as to which there was no controversy were, in substance, as follows: Beason, the deceased, was in the employment of the defendant company in the capacity of brakeman. On the night of his death his duty required him to ride upon a freight train which left Atlanta for Chattanooga Tenn. While riding thereon he was thrown to the ground, and was run over, thus receiving injuries from which he died. The cause of his fall was the sudden coming apart of the train. The two cars which separated when this happened were equipped with Janney couplers. A part of the apparatus composing such couplers was a knuckle pin. After the catastrophe it was discovered that the particular pin belonging to the couplers connecting the two cars last mentioned had broken in two, and only the upper portion of it was found in place. But for the breaking of this pin, the calamity would not have happened. The breaking of knuckle pins is of rare occurrence. The office of a knuckle pin is not to bear the main strain or pull which the locomotive exerts in drawing a train, but to hold the different portions of the coupling apparatus in proper positions to bear suitably upon each other, and thus keep them connected. The upper part of a pin broken like the one under consideration might be long enough to still have sufficient holding power or "purchase" to keep the couplers together during the movements incident to the starting of a train and the running of it for a considerable distance. Assuming, for the purposes of this argument, that the deceased was free from fault, the case on its merits turns upon the question whether or not the company, relatively to him, was guilty of any negligence with respect to the broken knuckle pin. The verdict necessarily embraced a finding that such negligence existed. After a very careful examination of the brief of evidence, we feel constrained to hold that this finding was wholly unwarranted. The company proved by affirmative, direct, and positive testimony, given by witnesses who were unimpeached, and who, as to the physical facts to which they testified, were, we think, uncontradicted, that this very pin was inspected only a few minutes before the train was started, and was then intact, and apparently in sound condition; that the break was fresh, and quite recent; and that there was a flaw in the pin, discoverable after the break, but not so before, except by exceedingly close and critical examination. Opposed to this the plaintiff proved that a knuckle pin was much more likely to be broken by the jars and strains which it would receive in a railroad yard during the progress of drilling and switching than through any pull or pressure to which it would be subjected from the starting of a train in the ordinary manner, or the drawing of it along the track. In this connection witnesses for the plaintiff, in reply to hypothetical questions propounded to them, testified, in effect, that a knuckle pin which had successfully withstood the shocks incident to the making up of such a train as the one under consideration would not...
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