Bartley ex rel. Bartley v. Trorlicht

49 Mo. App. 214, 1892 Mo. App. LEXIS 198
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedApril 5, 1892
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 49 Mo. App. 214 (Bartley ex rel. Bartley v. Trorlicht) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Bartley ex rel. Bartley v. Trorlicht, 49 Mo. App. 214, 1892 Mo. App. LEXIS 198 (Mo. Ct. App. 1892).

Opinion

Thompson, J.

This action is brought to recover damages, alleged to have been sustained by the plaintiff in consequence of personal injuries, received by him through the falling of an elevator in the building of the. defendants in St. Louis, which was being operated at the time by the plaintiff as an employe of the defendants. The action was brought in the circuit court of the city of St. Louis, but a change of venue was taken [216]*216by the plaintiff to the circuit court of St. Charles county, where there was a trial by a jury, which resulted in a verdict and judgment in favor of the plaintiff in the sum of $2,000; to reverse which the defendants prosecute this appeal. Numerous errors are assigned, which we shall separately consider, in what seems to be their proper order.

I. . The plaintiff was driven by successive demurrers to his third amended petition. In that petition he charged that, on the day of the accident and for a long time prior thereto, the elevator and machinery and appliances thereto were in a dangerous and .defective condition, and unsuitable and unfit for the use to which the defendants were applying the same. He then proceeded to make ten distinct and separate specifications of those defects. After the jury were sworn and before any testimony was taken, the defendants moved the court to require the plaintiff to elect on which one of the numerous specifications of defects in the elevator and machinery the plaintiff would go to trial. The court overruled this motion, and the defendants excepted. There was plainly no error in overruling this motion. The specifications of defect were not inconsistent with each other, nor were they mere repetitions of each other, but they were separate and cumulative specifications of different defects in the condition of the elevator and machinery annexed thereto. The case, therefore, presented no resemblance to the case, where an answer sets up inconsistent defenses in separate paragraphs, or where a petition sets up inconsistent grounds of action in separate counts. Suppose that the trial court had sustained the motion, and then the defendant had elected to go to trial on all the specifications; upon what ground then, known to the rules of procedure, could his judgment have been reversed, because he had failed to introduce evidence tending to prove all of [217]*217them? Or, if the plaintiff had elected to go to trial upon all of them, conld the court have required him to reject one or three or five or any number of them?

II. The next assignment of error, which we shall consider, is that the court erred in submitting the case to the jury. We do not take this view. The evidence is quite voluminous, but, without undertaking to set it out in detail, it is sufficient for the disposition of this point to say that it tended to show that the defendants kept a carpet store in the city of St. Louis, having four floors or stories; that they used, for ascending and descending between these various floors or stories, an elevator known as an Otis elevator; that this elevator had been in use about eleven years at the time of the accident; that it had no counter balance or descending weight, such as is now generally used on elevators, but which was not usual on this pattern of elevator at the time when it was constructed; that it frequently went with a jerking motion, and often too slowly; that it frequently caught and bound at the top, that is, against the top of the fourth stage or floor, when it would be necessary to get it down with the aid of the engineer in the basement by his starting the fly wheel; that it often worked in a shackly way; and, finally, that on the day of the accident it fell, stunning the plaintiff, who at the time was operating it, and inflicting serious injuries upon him. It appeared that after the fall, some parts of it were found broken, and that especially a certain pinion was found broken in two in consequence of an old and undiscovered break therein. But there was also evidence tending to show that this flaw or defect was in such a position, that it could not be discovered without taking apart the drum of the elevator, and that this would take three men fifteen hours. Without going into the countervailing evidence, which is not necessary for the purpose of this question, we [218]*218conclude that there was substantial evidence to take the question of the negligence of the defendants to the jury. Then, as to the contributory negligence of the plaintiff, the evidence clearly did not make out a case of contributory negligence on his part, such as would have enabled the judge as a matter of law to say, either upon the evidence furnished by the plaintiff or upon an undisputed or unchallenged state of evidence, that he had been guilty of contributory negligence.

III. It is next assigned for error that the court, at the request of the plaintiff, gave an instruction to the jury on the measure of damages, which authorized the jury to give damages “for any loss of earnings after he shall have arrived at the age of twenty-one years.” Two objections are made to this ruling: First. That there was no distinct averment in the petition, that the plaintiff would sustain damages in the way of loss of earnings after he should arrive at the age of twenty-one years. Second. That there was no evidence directly tending to show that he would sustain such a loss of earnings. We do not regard this assignment of error as well taken. The argument that loss of such earnings in an action for personal injuries is in the nature of special damages, and must be specially averred in the petition, is predicated on the decision of the supreme court in the recent case of Mellor v. Railroad, 105 Mo. 455, 464. In that case the court in lane, reaffirming an opinion written by Barclay, J., of division number 1, declares the proper rule to be: “Loss of earnings is a kind of injury which is not regarded as a necessary consequence of such acts as are complained of here, and, therefore, is not embraced within the plaintiff’s general allegations of damages. It is one sort of special damages, and, consequently, must in somewise be counted upon to constitute a basis for evidence on the subject.” It will be perceived, upon an examination of [219]*219the case in which this rule is declared, that the loss of earnings there under consideration was the loss of past earnings by an adult who, at the time of the injury, was employed at a definite salary. There is nothing in the opinion to indicate that the rule was intended to extend to the loss .of future earnings, — or rather to the damages which may be supposed to accrue from an impaired earning capacity through a total or partial physical disability. It has never been the practice, in drawing petitions in actions for damages for personal injuries in this state, to make special allegations as to the damages which will accrue from the diminution of the future earning capacity of the plaintiff or the person injured, in order to let in evidence of such an element of damage, or in order to warrant the jury in giving damages under that head. The two Missouri cases, cited by the supreme court in support of the proposition, were both cases of past damages, — in one of them a doctor’s bill already incurred (O’Leary v. Rowan, 31 Mo. 117), and the other past traveling expenses. State to use v. Blackman, 51 Mo. 319.

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Bluebook (online)
49 Mo. App. 214, 1892 Mo. App. LEXIS 198, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/bartley-ex-rel-bartley-v-trorlicht-moctapp-1892.