Gratiot Street Warehouse Co. v. Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway Co.

102 S.W. 11, 124 Mo. App. 545, 1907 Mo. App. LEXIS 253
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedApril 30, 1907
StatusPublished
Cited by19 cases

This text of 102 S.W. 11 (Gratiot Street Warehouse Co. v. Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway 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
Gratiot Street Warehouse Co. v. Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway Co., 102 S.W. 11, 124 Mo. App. 545, 1907 Mo. App. LEXIS 253 (Mo. Ct. App. 1907).

Opinion

NORTONI, J.

(after stating the facts). — 1. An instruction, peremptorily directing a verdict, was requested by defendant’s counsel and refused. This action of the court is assigned and argued as error, on the theory that the loss in this case was entailed solely by the act of God, unmixed with any neglect of duty on the part of the defendant. Several cases were cited sustaining the well-established doctrine that there is no liability when the loss occurs solely by the act of God, or from causes, such as the operation of the elements, over which the defendant had no control, and could not reasonably be foreseen or anticipated, as probabilities por[558]*558tending calamity, so as to afford the defendant a reasonable opportunity for protecting the property in its charge, and thus acquit itself of responsibility. These cases are Grier v. St. Louis, etc., Ry. Co., 108 Mo. App. 565, 84 S. W. 158; Amer. Brew. Co. v. Talbott, 141 Mo. 647, 42 S. W. 679; Moffat Com. Co. v. Union Pacific Ry. Co., 113 Mo. App. 544, 88 S. W. 117. In 1892, the year the defendant’s yards were built, the water reached a stage of thirty-six feet, and no damage to freight in the yards resulted therefrom. The conditions remaining the same, this fact, of course would lead an ordinarily prudent person to' believe them reasonably secure from inundation by any stage of water less than that attained that year, and although a stage of 41.4 feet was reached in 1844, and 37.1 feet in 1857, of which defendant had notice, it is hardly just to say that an ordinarily prudent person would anticipate a like stage of water in 1903, in ’view of the fact, first, that thirty-six feet was the highest stage since 1857, and second, in view of the further fact that since that date much change and improvement has been wrought with respect to the topography of the country, and for the carriage of waters in the Mississippi and Missouri valleys; for instance such as straightening small streams* draining swamps and lakes, removing the lodgment of driftwood and other causes which naturally impeded the free flow of the water in the early days. We all know this has been done/ looking to the further development of the country for agricultural purposes and for the betterment of the public health. So, were this the whole case and the defendant were otherwise diligent, no doubt it should have been peremptorily acquitted of negligence here, under the influence of the principle requiring one to exercise the proper measure of care, whatever that may be, in the discharge of a duty, to measure and ascertain the degree of care required by the law by what appears in the usual _ourse of human events, and endeavor to be [559]*559within the realm of reasonable anticipation, as under this principle, no one could fairly and justly say this defendant was negligent in not providing protection against less than a thirty-six foot stage of water; that is 33.2 feet, the high-water mark of June 5, when experience had dictated its labors to that end had been abundantly sufficient against thirty-six feet of water theretofore, and that thirty-six feet was the highest stage obtained by the river in recent years, since 1857, a period of forty-six years. This however, is not the whole case as made by the proof, and its discussion is beside the true question at issue. There is substantia] proof of two separate elements of negligence with which the court must reckon. First, it appears as an established fact and uncontroverted in the proof, that the defendant issued its bill of lading for the car of corn in question about one o’clock on June 3, and from its own witness, it is established by the usual course, the billing of the car would have been communicated to its intermediate office by four o’clock that afternoon; that it would be retained there from one to two hours, until proper records were made, and passed on and reach the yard office on the morning of June 4,» and therefore, had defendant’s agents been ordinarily diligent and passed the bill of lading on, as was the usual course, it would actually have been in the hands of the yard men at the time, and several hours prior to the actual physical receipt of the car at 1:25 on the same day. There is no doubt from the record, in fact it is an uncontroverted fact, that the car was not delivered until 1:25, June 4, and while this is true and defendant could not be liable for neglect thereabout, until the car was actually received, some one must have been inattentive about the process of forwarding the billing from the commercial office, for it appears the billing was not received in the yard office until the morning of June 5, whereas, ordinary diligence would have placed it there on the [560]*560morning of June 4, in advance of the car, and in the usual course of handling cars in and transporting them from the yard in an outgoing train, as testified to by the general yardmaster, the car would have gone forward on a train in the course of eight or ten hours after shipping instructions were received from the commercial office, or at least prior to the morning of June 5, or in other words, prior to the delivery of the billing by its intermediate office, to the yard office. So it appears from this that the defendant’s agents were inattentive and negligent with respect to their duty in passing the billing on to the yard office, which negligence operated to hold the car in the yards until June 5, when, in the usual course, it should have been en route to its destination before midnight on June 4. Without comment on the proof pertaining to the alleged order of the superintendent to remove the new empty cars in order to preserve their wheels from rust, and permitting the numerous loaded cars to remain in the yards, and without comment upon the evidence with respect to the employment of only three locomotives in the yard, when ten were available to remove the loaded cars, all of which was contradicted, and either of which we are of opinion is sufficient to send the question, of defendant’s negligence to the jury, there appears by the uncontradicted proof that defendant’s superintendent, under orders from its civil engineer, caused to be cut the west embankment, seeking to preserve the main line intact, and thus inundated the yards at 10:30 by its voluntary act, to such an extent that the labors which would otherwise have probably resulted in removing plaintiff’s car to a place of safety, were compelled to be suspended at 11:00 o’clock on that day and the car of corn was thereby destroyed. Now, it is well-settled law that if the.defendant’s negligence commingled with and operated as a contributive element proximate to the injury, even though such injury is to some and even a paramount injury, [561]*561operated by tbe act of God, tbe defendant will be liable as though its negligence were the entire and sole cause of the loss. In order for the defendant to escape liability under the exemption afforded by the law to the entailments of an act of God, the act of God must be the sole and only cause of the injury and this too, unmixed with the negligence of the defendant, for if the defendant’s negligent act commingled with it in the loss as an active and co-operative element and the loss is proximate thereto, or, in other words, js a reasonable consequence of the negligent act, it is regarded in the law as an act of the carrier rather than as an act of God. The principle is manifest from all of the cases and evidence of its proper application abounds in the books. [Wolf v. Amer. Ex. Co., 48 Mo. 421-425; Davis v. Railroad, 89 Mo. 340; Grier v. Railway, 108 Mo. App. 565; Prince v. St. Louis Cotton Compress Co., 112 Mo. App. 49, 86 S. W. 873; LaMont v. Railway, 9 Heisk. (Tenn.) 58; Moffat Com. Co. v. Railroad, 113 Mo. App.

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Bluebook (online)
102 S.W. 11, 124 Mo. App. 545, 1907 Mo. App. LEXIS 253, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gratiot-street-warehouse-co-v-missouri-kansas-texas-railway-co-moctapp-1907.