White v. Seaboard Air Line Ry.
Decision Date | 20 January 1914 |
Docket Number | 5156. |
Citation | 80 S.E. 667,14 Ga.App. 139 |
Parties | WHITE v. SEABOARD AIR LINE RY. |
Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
Syllabus by the Court.
(a) Under the law of the state of South Carolina (Const. art. 9 § 15), upon which the plaintiff bases his action, damages cannot be recovered for an injury inflicted by a fellow servant engaged in the same work with the person alleged to have been injured; but a servant is not precluded from recovery for an injury consequent upon an improper order given by one authorized by the defendant to supervise or direct the work in question. During the pendency of the work at least, such a one would be a superior agent of the company or of that particular officer of the company who in fact had the right to control or direct the services of the party injured.
(b) Even if the person who gave the improper order may properly be held to be a fellow servant, the award of a nonsuit is not warranted when it is issuable, under the evidence, whether the proximate cause of the injury was the negligence of a fellow servant or the negligence of the defendant in failing to supply a sufficient number of fellow servants to insure the safety of the plaintiff in the performance of the work assigned to him, at the time and place of the work and under the circumstances under which the work was to be done, or the negligence of the defendant in employing and retaining in its service, as a fellow servant with the plaintiff, one whose character and habits so far unsuited him for employment in the work where the defendant's servants were engaged as to jeopardize the plaintiff's safety. Questions of negligence are for the jury alone, and the determination of the proximate cause is involved in and essential to the ascertainment of to what negligence, as well as to whose negligence, the injury is properly attributable. A court can no more determine upon an issue as to what particular act or circumstance was the proximate cause of an alleged injury than it can determine that the same particular act was an act of negligence, for the jury might determine that the act which the court held was the proximate cause was not negligence, while they might be of the opinion that an act adjudged not to be the proximate cause of the injury was negligence.
In view of the evidence disclosing that the plaintiff did not, upon cross-examination, withdraw or alter in any material respect the testimony delivered by him in response to the direct examination, the ruling of the Supreme Court in Evans v Josephine Mills, 119 Ga. 448, 46 S.E. 674, is not in point.
Where the laws of a foreign state are pleaded as a basis of an action and plaintiff's right to recover, the laws of that state are to be applied in determining the plaintiff's right to recover. The laws of a foreign jurisdiction are to be given the same construction by the courts applying the remedy as that given by its court of last resort. Under the rulings of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, the term "appliance" includes...
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White v. Seabd. Air Line Ry
...80 S.E. 66714 Ga.App. 139WHITEv.SEABOARD AIR LINE RY.(No. 5156.)Court of Appeals of Georgia.Jan. 20, 1914.(Syllabus by the Court.)1. Master and Servant ( 189, 285, 287*) Injuries to ServantFellow Servants Vice PrincipalProximate CauseNonsuit.(a) Under the law of the state of South Carolina (Const, art. 9, 15), upon which the ... ...