Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Co. v. Anderson
| Decision Date | 13 March 1899 |
| Citation | 76 Miss. 582,25 So. 295 |
| Parties | YAZOO & MISSISSIPPI VALLEY RAILROAD CO. v. VAN A. ANDERSON |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
November 1898
FROM the circuit court of Franklin county, HON. W. P. CASSEDY Judge.
The opinion states the case.
Reversed and remanded.
Mayes & Harris, for the appellant.
The appellant offered to give the crossing as demanded, but wanted to provide gates through its fence on either side of the track, and to this the appellee refused to assent, and brought his suit for the penalty.
The statute only requires the making and maintenance of a convenient and suitable crossing over the track for a necessary plantation road. There is no evidence in the record that the crossing offered by the appellant was not in all respects convenient and suitable. The statute does not contemplate that the railroad company shall give an open crossing over its road, through its land, build cattle guards on either side--in other words, to make a lane through its right of way.
It was by no means unreasonable for the railroad company to insist upon having gates. So far as the protection of stock, and the protection of passengers and employes on the trains, and property being transported by the railroad company, were concerned, gates afforded better protection than an open crossing, even if supplied with stock gaps and cattle guards. These would enable stock to stray from either side of the appellee's ground onto the track, and thus endanger passing trains.
This statute is a penal statute and it must be strictly construed and if the railroad company provides and maintains a suitable and convenient crossing over its track, with easy access to the landowner, it has complied with the terms of the statute, and there is nothing in the statute which we can find that would prohibit the company from maintaining its fences and gates at the place where the crossing was made. Certainly, the railroad company has some rights in a matter of this kind. It is stretching the police power far enough to require the railroad company to make and maintain any kind of a crossing at its expense. We refer the court, on the question of the reciprocal right of the parties, to Thornton on Crossings, pp. 453, 454.
Cassedy & Cassedy, for the appellee.
The statute makes it the duty of every railroad company to make and maintain suitable and convenient crossings over its tracks for necessary plantation roads. So we take it that the question to be determined is whether or not the crossing was necessary; then, if necessary, whether it has been made and maintained. The duty to make and maintain the crossing, if it is necessary, does not cease, nor is the railroad company acquitted therefrom because the party interested refused to accept such crossing as the railroad company determined upon itself. If, in addition to the necessity for the crossing, in this case, the appellee is required to evade the effect of the offer of the railroad company, then we contend that the statute also requires the crossing to be convenient and suitable. All he must show to establish the failure of the railroad company to perform this statutory duty would be that the crossing offered was not convenient nor suitable--that is to say, that it was...
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