Yazoo & M.V.R. Co. v. Hardie

• Decision Date: 15 May 1911
• Docket Number: 14,595
• Citation: 100 Miss. 132,55 So. 42
• Parties: YAZOO & MISSISSIPPI VALLEY RAILROAD CO. v. MRS. W. H. HARDIE
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

55 So. 42

100 Miss. 132

YAZOO & MISSISSIPPI VALLEY RAILROAD CO. v. MRS. W. H. HARDIE

No. 14,595

Supreme Court of Mississippi

May 15, 1911

APPEAL from the circuit court of Caohoma county, HON. SAM. C. COOK Judge.

Suit by Mrs. W. Hardie against the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Company. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals.

The facts are fully stated in the opinion of the court.

Reversed and remanded.

Mayes &amp Longino, for appellant.

J. W Cutrer and Brewer & Watkins, for appellee.

The record in this case being lost the reporter is unable to give the briefs of counsel.

OPINION

MAYES, C. J.

On this record the only question we are required to determine is whether or not the trial court should have instructed the jury that they might assess punitive damages. If the facts did not warrant the submission of this question to the jury, the case must be reversed, as it is manifest that the jury awarded more than actual damage. Should the trial court have authorized the jury to consider the question of punitive damages? Since this is the only question which we are required to determine at this time, all testimony relating to the physical condition of Mrs. Hardie at the date she was carried beyond her stop is unimportant. It is equally unimportant to consider the testimony as to what her purposes were in going from Clarksdale to Arcola, and that she was in an impaired state of health, and intended to go to a hospital in Greenville, after staying a few days at the home of a friend near Arcola. We may leave out of view the condition of the weather at the time the train from Clarksdale arrived at Arcola at 3:25 p. m. It is equally unimportant to consider the fact that by being carried by her station to Rolling Fork, and after her return to Arcola at 6 o'clock p. m., she got off her train at Arcola in the rain, and her condition of ill health was aggravated by getting wet. These facts may be material on a question of actual damage. Such facts may also be material as matters of aggravation, if the facts in the record made a case for the assessment of punitive damages. But as stated above the sole question in this case is whether or not it was proper for the court to instruct the jury that they might assess punitive damages. In the consideration of this question, all circumstances which might aggravate the damage must be placed out of view until the question of whether punitive damages can be assessed at all is determined.

The facts are wanting in every element which would warrant the court in instructing the jury that punitive damages might be assessed. A railroad company is not liable for punitive damages for a mere failure to perform its contractual duty. This is expressly held in the case of Railroad Company v. Scurr, 59 Miss. 456, 42 Am. Rep. 373, and in many cases cited in the reprint of this case to be found in book 29, page 189, Reprint of Mississippi Reports. A railroad company which has violated its duty can be assessed with punitive damages only where there has been some intentional wrong, insult, abuse, harshness, or where there has been such gross neglect of duty as to evince reckless indifference of the rights of others. This has been the consistent holding of this court in all cases which have been brought to it where this question was involved. In this case there is no evidence evincing any intentional wrong, insult, abuse, harshness, or gross neglect of duty evincing indifference to the right of the appellee. Hrs. Hardie boarded the train at Clarksdale for Arcola. She provided herself with a ticket which entitled her to passage on the train, and on entering same, instead of going into the day coach, she went into the Pullman for the purpose of obtaining the more desirable accommodation afforded by it. When she entered the Pullman car, she paid the additional fare, and it became the duty of both the Pullman Company and the railroad company to notify her when she reached her destination, and to assist her to safely get off the cars at that point. The train reached her destination at 3:25 in the afternoon, but no employee of either company notified her that she had reached her destination, nor was any attempt made to notify her while the train stopped at her station; but there is no evidence in the record from which it may be inferred that this failure of duty on the part of the two companies was the result of anything more than mere neglect. There is no evidence tending to prove that the failure of the two companies to discharge their duty was intentional, or the result of a reckless disregard of the rights of Mrs. Hardie.

Shortly after the train started from Arcola, the station at which Mrs. Hardie should have gotten off, she discovered that she had passed her station and undertook to have the porter stop the train, and a few minutes afterwards appealed to the conductor, demanding that he stop the train and take her back to Arcola. At this time the train had gone some hundred yards or more from the station at Arcola and was under full headway. The testimony shows that the conductor was polite and courteous, and that the employees of both the railroad and sleeping car company were courteous and polite; but the conductor refused to stop the train and have it backed to Arcola for the purpose of allowing Mrs. Hardie to debark. The proof shows that the conductor declined to do this, not because of any intent on his part to disregard the rights of of Mrs. Hardie, not because of any intention to inflict any intentional injury or cause her trouble, but because, in good faith, he believed that her request was impracticable, and that the train had proceeded too far for him to do as requested. There was no harshness, no impoliteness, no rudeness, no intentional injury, unless it can be said that the mere fact that the conductor would not comply with the request of appellee constituted an intentional wrong or gross neglect of duty. This we cannot say. Mrs. Hardie was carried beyond her station to Rolling Fork, and returned safely to Arcola about 6 o'clock in the afternoon, without cost. She does not complain of any lack of courtesy on the part of the employees to her. It may be that it was the duty of the conductor to stop the train and carry Mrs. Hardie back to her station. As to what the duties of the conductor were we are not called upon to decide. If it be conceded that it was his duty to back up to the station and let Mrs. Hardie off, a mere failure to observe that duty would no more justify awarding punitive damages than would the failure to put her off at the station in the first instance, if no intentional wrong, rudeness, or harshness characterized a refusal to stop and back up, when the conductor was acting in good faith and in the honest belief that his duty required him to go on to the next station.

It is evident the company is liable for whatever actual damage Mrs. Hardie may have sustained by reason of the failure to perform its duty, but there is no liability for punitive damages. We are unable to distinguish this case from the case of Miss. & Tenn. R. R. Co. v. Gill, 66 Miss. 39, 5 So. 393.

Reversed and remanded.

After the delivery of the above opinion counsel for appellee filed an elaborate suggestion of error.

MAYES C. J., delivered the opinion of the court in response to the suggestion of error.

On the 12th day of March, 1909, Mrs. Hardie became a passenger on the line of railway owned by appellant. She boarded a regular passenger train at Clarksdale, bound for Arcola. The train on which she was traveling was due to arrive at Arcola at 3:25 p. m. and did arrive at that time, but on account of the negligence of the employees of the train Mrs. Hardie was carried beyond Arcola to Rolling Fork, and returned on the next train without expense to herself, reaching Arcola about 6 p. m. Omitting in this preface to state the circumstances of aggravation relied on as constituting the basis for the assessment of punitive damages, it is sufficient to state that she suffered a delay of about two hours and thirty-five minutes. She brought suit against appellant, alleging, among other things, that as soon as it was discovered that she had been negligently carried by her station, the porter of the car seized the bell cord, and caused the train to stop about a quarter of a mile below the depot, whereupon she demanded that her train be backed to the station and she be allowed to get off, and the declaration alleges that this the employees "willfully, maliciously, oppressively, and arbitrarily declined to do." She recovered a judgment against appellant for five thousand dollars, and from this judgment an appeal was prosecuted and the cause reversed, and this court, after mature consideration of the whole case, was of the opinion that no view of the case warranted the trial court in authorizing the jury to impose punitive damage. This case is again before us on suggestion of error, filed by counsel for appellee, to the original opinion. Before discussing the case in detail, a few general observations may not be amiss.

Some of the questions now pressed for decision, while in the case on its first hearing, were deemed not essential to decision, and we did not decide them. We shall do so now. When we held that the facts made no case for punitive damage, the questions now discussed were necessarily decided adverse to counsel for appellee.

It appears that when Mrs. Hardie took passage on the train, she went into a Pullman car attached to same, and became a passenger on that. The suit was begun originally against both the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Company and the Pullman Company. When all testimony had been taken a motion was made by the Pullman Company to peremptorily instruct the...