White v. Thompson

• Decision Date: 07 December 1943
• Docket Number: No. 26496.,26496.
• Citation: White v. Thompson, 176 S.W.2d 53 (Mo. App. 1943)
• Parties: WHITE v. THOMPSON.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

176 S.W.2d 53

WHITE v. THOMPSON.

No. 26496.

St. Louis Court of Appeals. Missouri.

December 7, 1943.

Appeal from St. Louis Circuit Court; F. E. Williams, Judge.

"Not to be reported in State Reports."

Action for false arrest and imprisonment by Mack White against Guy A. Thompson, trustee for the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company, debtor. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals.

Reversed and remanded.

Thomas J. Cole and Thos. T. Railey, both of St. Louis, for appellant.

S. E. Garner, of St. Louis, for respondent.

BENNICK, Commissioner.

This is an action for false arrest and imprisonment growing out of plaintiff's ejection from a passenger train of the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company at Paragould, Arkansas, in the early morning of December 25, 1941. The defendant is Guy A. Thompson, the trustee in charge of the operation of the railroad under appointment by the United States District Court. Tried to a jury in the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis, a verdict was returned in favor of plaintiff, and against defendant, for the sum of $1,000 actual damages and $2,000 punitive damages, aggregating the sum of $3,000. Judgment was rendered in accordance with the verdict; and defendant's appeal to this court has followed in the usual course.

Plaintiff was a passenger on the train which he had boarded at St. Louis, Missouri, with a ticket for passage to Memphis, Tennessee, where he expected to spend a couple of weeks with his son who resided in the latter city.

The substance of the cause of action set up in the petition was that at the time and place in question, "the defendant wrongfully caused, instigated and directed the arrest and imprisonment of plaintiff by the police officers and other officers of said Paragould in said state; that said officers did beat, assault, and strike plaintiff on his head, limbs and body, whereby his head, limbs and body were bruised and cut and made sore and he was caused to sustain great nervous shock; and by reason of all of said acts of defendant, his agents and servants, said officers arrested plaintiff and compelled him to go with them in public to a police station or jail in said Paragould, Arkansas, and to be detained and restrained of his liberty for the space of about one day, all against his will".

The answer was a general denial, followed by special pleas, first, that defendant's employees were justified in asking the police officers of Paragould, Arkansas, to remove plaintiff from the train because he was at the time drunk, disorderly, profane, stinking from vomit and liquor, and had failed and refused to surrender his ticket, if he had one, or to tell the employees where he was going; and second, that defendant's employees did not ask, order, or request any assault to be committed upon plaintiff, nor did they request his conveyance to or confinement in jail, but only requested his removal from the train.

Plaintiff, Mack White, a man about sixty-five years of age, had boarded the train at Union Station in St. Louis, and had taken a seat in a coach reserved exclusively for colored people. The train was crowded, with all seats occupied, and other passengers standing in the aisles.

Plaintiff admitted that late in the afternoon before the time for his departure, he and a friend had drunk half of a bottle of wine which he had in his possession, and that when the train was out about a hundred miles from the city, he had left his seat and gone out into the vestibule where he had met a couple of colored soldiers who joined him in drinking the rest of the bottle. He denied that he drank anything else on the trip; and he was generally supported by three of his fellow passengers, who had observed him in the car, and testified to his good condition and proper behavior at all times before his arrest. One witness, who had sat directly facing plaintiff, had noticed the smell of liquor on his breath, but she insisted that he was not drunk, and that there was nothing about his appearance which had caused her to have any objection to his immediate presence near her.

The train upon which plaintiff left St. Louis follows the company's main line to Little Rock, and at Knobel, Arkansas, the Memphis cars are switched off and taken up as part of the train which runs over a branch line from Knobel to Memphis. Paragould is nineteen miles from Knobel, and is the first stop for the train on the Knobel to Memphis run. Each of the trains has its separate crew; and a ticket from St. Louis to Memphis is merely punched by the conductor out of St. Louis and then returned to the passenger who retains it in his possession until it is later taken up by the conductor in charge of the train out of Knobel.

The trouble in this case arose over plaintiff's failure to produce his ticket for the conductor out of Knobel as the latter came through the coach collecting tickets after the train had started on its run.

According to plaintiff's version of the facts, he had placed the ticket in his pocket where it had become intermingled with some other papers so that he was not able to lay his hand upon it immediately upon the conductor's demand. This angered the conductor, who passed plaintiff by temporarily, but admonished him to have his ticket in readiness by the time of his return.

Plaintiff finally found his ticket and had it available for delivery to the conductor if he had come back to collect it as he had said he would and as plaintiff expected him to do. However, the conductor did not return until after the train had stopped at Paragould, when he came back into the coach accompanied by two police officers, to whom he pointed plaintiff out. Nothing further was said about a ticket, but instead the officers demanded that plaintiff go with them; and when, in his confusion, he did not arise from his seat as quickly as they apparently desired, either one or both of the officers struck him several blows, knocking him down upon the floor of the coach, and inflicting certain injuries upon him. Plaintiff offered no resistance to his removal from the train; and after being placed in a police car, he was taken to the city jail, where he was confined until the following afternoon, when his daughter-in-law arrived from Memphis and obtained his release upon depositing a cash bond of $10.

Plaintiff admitted that all that the conductor did was to point him out to the officers; and neither he nor any of his witnesses made any contention that the conductor took any part in his physical ejection from the train, or in his confinement in the city jail to which he was taken by the officers.

Defendant's evidence, on the...