Alabama Great Southern Railroad v. Carroll

97 Ala. 126
CourtSupreme Court of Alabama
DecidedJuly 1, 1892
StatusPublished
Cited by59 cases

This text of 97 Ala. 126 (Alabama Great Southern Railroad v. Carroll) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Alabama primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Alabama Great Southern Railroad v. Carroll, 97 Ala. 126 (Ala. 1892).

Opinion

McCLELLAN, J.

— The plaintiff "W. D. Carroll is, and was at the time of entering into the service of the defendant, the Alabama Great Southern Bailroad Company, and at the time of being injured in that service, a citizen of Alabama. The defendant is an Alabama corporation operating a railroad extending from Chattanooga in the State of Tennessee through Alabama to Meridian in the State Mississippi. At the time of the casualty complained of, plaintiff was in the service of the defendant in the capacity of brakeman on freight trains running from Birmingham, Alabama, to Meridian, Mississippi, under a contract which was made in the State of Alabama. The injury was caused by the. breaking of a link between two cars in a freight train which was proceeding from Birmingham to Meridian. The point at which the link broke and the injury was suffered was in the State of Mississippi. The evidence tended to show that the link which broke was a defective link and that it was in a defective condition when the train left Birmingham. It Avas shoAvn that this link, had come to the defendant’s road at Chattanooga, Tennessee, with a car which belonged to and came to that point over a road Avhich was foreign to the A. G. S. road. That at Chattanooga, this foreign car Avas coupled into a train of the defendant by means of this link, the destination of the car next in rear of it being Birmingham, and the destination of the second car in the rear of it, Avhich belonged to defendant, being Meridian, to which point the foreign car Avas also bound. At Birmingham the car betAveen this foreign car and the A. G. S. car which Avere billed to Meridian was cut out, and these tAvo were coupled together by means of the link which had come to the defendant Avith the foreign car. The evidence went also to sIioav that the defect in this link consisted in or resulted from its having been bent Avhile cold, that thi^ tended to weaken the iron and in this instance had cracked the link someAvhat on the outer curve of the bend, and that the link broke at the point of this crack. It was shovvn to be the duty of certain employees of defendant stationed along its line to inspect the links attached to cars to be put in trains or forming the couplings between cars in trains at Chattanooga, Birmingham, and some points betAveen Birmingham and the place where this link broke, and [128]*128also that it was the duty of the conductor of freight trains and the other train-men to maintain such in spection as occasion afforded throughout the runs or trips of such trains; and the evidence affords ground for inference that there was a negligent omission on the part of such employees to perform this duty, or if performed, the failure to discover the defect in and to remove this link was the result of negligence.

The foregoing statement of facts, either proved or finding lodgment in the tendencies of the evidence, together with the evidence' of the law of Mississippi, as to the master’s liability for injuries sustained by an employee in his service, will suffice for the consideration and determination of the question which is of chief importance in this ease, namely, whether the defendant is liable at all on the facts presented by this record for an injury sustained by the defendant in the State of Mississippi. The affirmative of this inquiry is sought to be rested and maintained upon two distinct propositions. In the first place, it is insisted that the negligence which one aspect of the evidence tends to establish is that of the defendant in respect of a duty which the law imposes upon the master and which whether performed or undertaken to be performed in the particular instance by the hand of the master or by the hand of one to whom he had delegated its performance is yet to be taken as being performed or attempted to be performed by the master himself, in such sort that the employer is responsible for its misperformance or non-performance whereby injury results to one of his employees under the doctrine o! the common-law and wholly irrespective of statutory jarovisions. These doctrines are presumed, and also shown bjr the evidence in this case, to obtain in the State of Mississippi ; and the defendant being an Alabama corporation it cannot be questioned that an action may be maintained in this State to recover damages for an injury sustained in Mississippi, by one of its servants, if the facts present a good cause of action under the law of that State. It is manifest beyond adverse inference on the evidence, conceding the link, the breaking of which caused the accident, to have been in a defective condition when it came to defendant’s road at Chattanooga attached to, and intended to be used in the further transportation, of the foreign car, that it was so used from that point to the place of the accident, that this defective condition of the link was patent to such observation as should have been bestowed upon it and that the defect in it was the proximate cause of the injury to the plaintiff, it [129]*129is, we say clear upon every aspect of the testimony, conceding all this to be true, that the use of that link in coupling the foreign car to the defendant’s train and also in its use throughout the voyage from Chattanooga into Mississippi was due to the negligence of employees of the defendant who were charged by it with the duty of inspecting the link before and at the time of incorporating the foreign car into this train and at the several points in Alabama where inspectors were stationed as shown by the evidence, and also of the train-men charged with the duty of inspection as the train was en route. There is no pretense that the defendant had not been sufficiently careful in the selection of these inspectors or that they were incompetent. It is not pretended that -they were insufficient in number or stationed at points too widely separated along the line. There is no such idea advanced as .that the defendant was negligent in the purchasing of links of adequate strength, and supplying them to these inspectors and to trains generally.; or that there was any necessity for the continued use of this link upon a discovery of its defective condition; but on the contrary it is affirmatively shown that the defendant purchased and supplied its trains and employees with all necessary links of good quality and perfect condition to be used in its trains, to supply the places of links which became defective from use, and to substitute for defective links coming to this road with foreign cars. The only negligence, in other words and in short, which finds support by direction or inference in any tendency of the evidence, is that of persons whose duty it was to inspect the links of the train, and remove such as were defective and replace them with others which were not defective. This was the negligence not of the master, the defendant, but of fellow-servants of the plaintiff, for which at common-law the defendant is not liable. Thus it is said in McKinney on Fellow-Servants, § 127 : “It is a very common thing for train hands to receive injury through the negligence of persons employed by the company to inspect their cars to discover defects and repair them. The weight of authority, perhaps, is to the effect that the negligence of such employees in the performance of such duties cannot be attributed to the company, and it is consequently not liable for it.” Citing among other cases Smith v. Potter, 46 Mich. 258; s. c. 2 Am. & Eng. R. R. Cas. 140; Mackin v. Railroad Co., 135 Mass. 201; s. c. 15 Am. & Eng. R. R. Cas. 196; Railroad Co. v. Webb, 12 Ohio St. 475; Railroad Co. v. Rice, 11 So. West Rep. (Ark.) 699 ; Kidwell v. Railroad Co. 3 Wood (U. S.) 313; and our own case [130]

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Bluebook (online)
97 Ala. 126, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/alabama-great-southern-railroad-v-carroll-ala-1892.