Home/Supreme Court of Missouri/Burnes v. Kansas City, Fort Scott & Memphis Railroad

Burnes v. Kansas City, Fort Scott & Memphis Railroad

31 S.W. 347, 129 Mo. 41, 1895 Mo. LEXIS 121
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedJune 4, 1895
StatusPublished
Cited by22 cases

This text of 31 S.W. 347 (Burnes v. Kansas City, Fort Scott & Memphis Railroad) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Burnes v. Kansas City, Fort Scott & Memphis Railroad, 31 S.W. 347, 129 Mo. 41, 1895 Mo. LEXIS 121 (Mo. 1895).

Opinion

Gantt, P. J.

This is an action for personal injuries sustained by the plaintiff while in defendant’s employ as foreman of a switching crew in its yards at Kansas City, Missouri.

The petition alleged plaintiff was hurt by the negligence of the defendant in two respects: First, it required him to work in a dangerous place, to wit, on a certain inclined track; and, second, “by carelessly permitting a grain door from a car to be left lying on said elevated incline, on which he stepped in the dark and was thereby thrown to the ground and his leg broken.”

The first charge of negligence was withdrawn from the jury by the court, and, as plaintiff is not appealing, will require but little consideration. The answer was a general denial and contributory negligence. The following facts appeared in evidence:

On February 10, 1891, plaintiff was employed by defendant as foreman of a switching crew which worked in its yards at night. He was thirty-six years old, an experienced switchman, and had been in railroad service of various kinds for eighteen years and had worked for many years in these same yards. Plaintiff was hurt by stepping upon what is called a grain door, which had been left or placed by someone upon an elevated track belonging to defendant, and was thereby thrown to the ground and his leg broken. This elevated track was used for transferring grain from one train to another.

It appeared that when grain consigned to points beyond Kansas City and was delivered to the defendant company at that place in cars that were in bad order, so that it was not safe to send them forward, or in cars [47]*47belonging to companies which did not allow them to go further south than Kansas City, it was necessary to transfer the grain into other cars that were m good order and would be allowed by the companies owning them to carry the grain to destination. To facilitate this transfer, the elevated track was constructed; the print and photographs filed as exhibits herewith give its appearance and how it was constructed. It rose gradually from the level of defendant’s yards, running therefrom northwardly, first on an earth embankment ninety feet long, and then on trestle work two hundred and four feet, which brought it to a level of about six feet above the ground on the easterly side; it then ran at this elevation on a trestle, a distance of six hundred feet, where at its north end it stopped abruptly with a post or rail to prevent cars .running off. Thus it will be seen, cars left upon the elevated track were six feet above the cars placed on the track located on the surface of the ground just east of the elevated track and marked on the print in evidence, track number 40

[46]*46

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Bluebook (online)
31 S.W. 347, 129 Mo. 41, 1895 Mo. LEXIS 121, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/burnes-v-kansas-city-fort-scott-memphis-railroad-mo-1895.