Degel v. St. Louis Transit Co.

74 S.W. 156, 101 Mo. App. 56, 1903 Mo. App. LEXIS 368
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedApril 14, 1903
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 74 S.W. 156 (Degel v. St. Louis Transit Co.) 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
Degel v. St. Louis Transit Co., 74 S.W. 156, 101 Mo. App. 56, 1903 Mo. App. LEXIS 368 (Mo. Ct. App. 1903).

Opinion

REYBURN, J.

This is an action to recover damages for personal injuries sustained by plaintiff, while with her husband in a single-horse spring wagon moving southwardly in the west track of defendant’s railway, on Broadway near Clarence avenue in the city of •St. Louis. The evidence established that between three and four o’clock, a. m., July 3, 1901, plaintiff and her husband, a truck farmer, had been for a considerable distance riding in the western car track used by defendant’s south-bound cars, and when they approached Clarence avenue, plaintiff heard the noise of a car approaching behind them and then about thirty feet dis[58]*58tant, and warned her husband who sought to escape by turning east, but the wagon was struck and overturned. The colliding car was designated a beer express car, carrying no passengers and in charge of no conductor. Plaintiff, who had traveled over this street frequently for many years, testified that neither she nor her husband had looked or listened for a car, until apprised by the noise that one was drawing dangerously near to their vehicle.

. The negligence charged is threefold: first, that the servants of defendant in charge of said car negligently, carelessly and unskillfully managed, controlled, ran and operated its car and caused it to collide with the rear portion of the wagon; second, that the motorman m charge of the ear saw, or by the exercise of ordinary care, would have seen plaintiff in a position of peril and could by the exercise of ordinary care, have stopped the car or slackened its speed in time to avoid injuring plaintiff, but negligently failed to use ordinary care in that regard; and, third, the paragraph of the Municipal Code of the city of St. Louis, familiarly termed, “vigilant watch” ordinance, is set forth and the acceptance, violation and disobedience of its provisions by defendant charged. The answer was a general denial and a plea of contributory negligence.

1. The defendant urges that as the plaintiff betrayed in her own testimony that according to her well-established habit and practice, she had long been traveling over Broadway southwardly in the early morning, and on this occasion riding a long distance on the track of defendant, the duty was rightly imposed on her to look and listen for the approach of cars of defendant, and her confessed failure so to do constituted such negligence, that the demurrer to the evidence should have been sustained. A conclusive refutation of this contention is found in the recent expressions of the Supreme Court which, by constitutional authority, must dominate. It is a familiar and well-established legal [59]*59principle that, although a person may have negligently exposed himself to danger, the duty still remains tO' refrain from killing or injuring him. The general rule-may he deduced that a party, plaintiff, who has placed himself in a dangerous position, where injury is likely to result and does ensue, notwithstanding such negligence on his part, may still recover for such injury, if he can establish that the defendant knew, or by the exercise of reasonable diligence could have known, Gf plaintiff’s peril in time to avoid injuring him, and failed to exert reasonable care by which such injury might have been averted. The testimony shows that plaintiff herein was guilty of such negligence as would preclude a recovery, unless the motorman of the defendant saw or could have seen her exposure to danger, in time to have avoided the accident if he had exercised reasonable care. The ease falls within the now well-established exception in the law of negligence permitting a .recovery notwithstanding the negligence of the party injured, if defendant, after seeing the party in danger, or where such duty was imposed on defendant, by the exercise of ordinary care, might have seen him in time and averted the accident, failed to do so. If defendant’s motorman saw, or by the exercise of ordinary care could have seen, the peril of plaintiff, even though caused by her own negligence, in time to avoid injury to her, the plaintiff was entitled to recover, and her failure to look and listen for the colliding car was “no bar.

Broadway, upon which the plaintiff was proceeding, was a public street, upon which she had full right to travel at her pleasure at any hour by night as well as by day, without any negligence being imputable to her. Pedestrians and persons in vehicles have the unquestionable right to use the track of a street car line on a public thoroughfare, but such use by the public is subordinate to the right of way over its own tracks of the cars of the street railroad, and when necessary, [60]*60those on the tracks must yield in the proper operation of the cars. Moore v. Railroad, 136 Mo. 265; Winters v. Railroad, 99 Mo. 509. Plaintiff being in that portion of the highway, upon which was constructed defendant’s line over which its cars were operated, was bound to a degree of watchfulness for such car’s approach, but the defendant’s servant engaged in operating a dangerous and powerful machinery at a rapid speed, was charged by law with the knowledge that pedestrians and people in vehicles had the right to be upon the highway, and would be using it, and it was therefore the duty of such motorman to take all reasonable measures to avoid accidents and to exercise a degree of commensurate care to discover the vehicle in which defendant was riding. The case of Klockenbrink v. Railroad, originally decided by this court, and recently affirmed by the Supreme Court, will be found very similar to and decisive of this case in the application of the foregoing propositions, which find support in many other decisions of the Supreme Court. Klockenbrink v. Railroad, 81 Mo. App. 383; Klockenbrink v. Railroad, 172 Mo. 678; Morgan v. Railroad, 159 Mo. 262; Schmidt v. Railroad, 149 Mo. 269; Schmidt v. Railroad, 163 Mo. 649; Oates v. Railroad, 168 Mo. 535.

2. The first instruction for plaintiff is assailed, as construing the “vigilant watch” ordinance to require both the conductor of the car and its motorman to keep a vigilant watch for vehicles on defendant’s track, and thereby contravening the proposition lately announced by this court, that the above ordinance imposed no such duty on the conductor. Grebhardt v. Railroad, 97 Mo. App. (St. L.) 373; 71 S. W. 448. The injuring car in this instance, however, carried no agent of defendant except a motorman, being employed not for the carriage of passengers, but for the transportation of freight, and this error was harmless.

3. The second instruction on behalf of plaintiff is as follows:

[61]*61“If the jury believe and find from the evidence in this ease that Broadway was on the 3rd day of July, 1901, an open public highway in the city of St. Lonis; that at said time defendant was using the railway and ear mentioned in the evidence for the purpose of transferring freight for hire from one point to another within the city of St.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Stewart Dry Goods Co. v. Hutchison
198 S.W. 17 (Court of Appeals of Kentucky, 1917)
Union Biscuit Co. v. St. Louis Transit Co.
83 S.W. 288 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1904)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
74 S.W. 156, 101 Mo. App. 56, 1903 Mo. App. LEXIS 368, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/degel-v-st-louis-transit-co-moctapp-1903.