Woodward Iron Co. v. Gamble

• Citation: 81 So. 810,203 Ala. 20
• Decision Date: 01 May 1919
• Docket Number: 6 Div. 890
• Parties: WOODWARD IRON CO. v. GAMBLE.
• Court: Supreme Court of Alabama

81 So. 810

203 Ala. 20

WOODWARD IRON CO. v. GAMBLE.

6 Div. 890

Supreme Court of Alabama

May 1, 1919

Appeal from Circuit Court, Jefferson County; C.B. Smith, Judge.

Action by John Gamble against the Woodward Iron Company, for damages for injuries received while in its employ. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Transferred from Court of Appeals under section 6, p. 449, Acts 1911. Reversed and remanded.

V.J Nesbit, of Birmingham, for appellant.

Beddow & Oberdorfer, of Birmingham, for appellee.

SAYRE J.

The report of this appeal will show count 4 of plaintiff's (appellee's) complaint.

Plaintiff was an electrician's helper in defendant's mine. John Green, plaintiff, and another, were going on an electrically drawn empty coal car, an ordinary coal car, to repair the trolley wire at a point indicated as entry 44 East. At that point an electric light illuminated the surroundings. About 50 yards before the car reached the light John Green, alleged to be a person in the employment of defendant to whose order plaintiff was bound to conform (Code, § 3910, subd. 3), said "Throw off your tools where the light is; that is where we get off." This was the order on which plaintiff counted. At the point designated plaintiff threw off his bag of tools, and himself safely alighted from the car, and was walking along by the side of it. At that time the car was moving about as fast as a man could walk, and thereafter came to a stop in about a car length. In the meantime, however John Green attempted to alight from the car; but an iron bolt, projecting about an inch above the surface of the car caught in his clothing, so that he was unable to alight immediately and was carried along until his body came into contact with plaintiff, knocking him down, whereby one of his feet was caught beneath a wheel of the car and injured.

If it be conceded that questions whether the order to alight from the car may have been properly accepted as an order to alight while yet the car was in motion, whether plaintiff was bound to conform to the orders of John Green, and whether in general the order was negligently given raised issues necessary to be submitted to the jury, we are of opinion that it cannot be said that plaintiff's injury resulted in a legal sense proximately from the order. The order, as far as it went, was safely executed; but the event disclosed the fact that, upon the concessions stated above, it placed plaintiff in a situation where he was injured as the result of a most extraordinary sequence of events. In order to fix defendant's liability it must appear--the evidence must afford reasonable warrant for a finding--that, as in broad terms the rule is generally stated, plaintiff's injury flowed in natural and continuous sequence from the negligence charged. Mr. Street, in his work on the Foundations of Legal Liability, affirms that the question whether damage claimed is proximate or remote, recoverable or nonrecoverable, "is always to be determined on the facts of each case upon mixed considerations of logic, common sense, justice, policy, and precedent. *** The best use that can be...