Hays v. Wabash Railway Co.

51 Mo. App. 438, 1892 Mo. App. LEXIS 458
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedDecember 5, 1892
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 51 Mo. App. 438 (Hays v. Wabash 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
Hays v. Wabash Railway Co., 51 Mo. App. 438, 1892 Mo. App. LEXIS 458 (Mo. Ct. App. 1892).

Opinion

Ellison, J.

Plaintiff was injured in attempting to get aboard a caboose attached to the rear end of a moving freight train as it was passing the depot platform at the town of Dewitt, on defendant’s road. In making the attempt, he missed his hold, and fell. He brought this action for damages and recovered in the [442]*442trial court. The testimony on plaintiff’s part as to the accident and its cause is almost wholly composed of plaintiff’s own statement as a witness. It was contradicted in its material parts by the trainmen, and by several disinterested witnesses who were in a position to know whereof they spoke. Looking, however, alone to the testimony for plaintiff we find that he took passage on defendant’s freight train at Brunswick for Carrollton, a point on defendant’s road west of Brunswick, by boarding the caboose and paying cash fare as far as Dewitt (the place where he received his injury), and there getting a ticket of the agent at the depot for Carrollton. On arriving at Dewitt the train stopped at the depot platform, but leaving the caboose, in which he and some other passengers were seated, among whom he noticed Miss Barrett, 'about one hundred and fifty feet east of the platform; that he got out at this point leaving Miss Barrett in the car and walked along a plain, level and smooth path to the depot, going into the ticket office and getting a ticket from the agent in discharge of a debt the agent owed him. His claim, against the agent being five cents more than the price of the ticket, the agent gave him a “nickel’? with the ticket; that he remained in the ticket office about five minutes and then went out on the platform and engaged in social conversation with a Mr. Barrett for near fifteen minutes and until the train commenced to move; when the train began to move some one said it would not stop and he began to go towards the east end of the platform to meet the caboose, and when it came by him, going at the rate of three or four miles an hour, he attempted to get on, but, missing his step or hold, he fell and was injured by the car crushing his foot; that the conductor was on the platform, and did not say to him individually that passengers should go to the caboose and get on, as the train would not stop after [443]*443starting, and he did not hear the conductor make such announcement generally; that he “was watching the caboose more than the conductor, and was'talking with Mr. Barrett, so if the conductor said that he did not hear him.” He also says: “Don’t think Mr. Barrett told me to get on; that they would not stop the caboose again at the platform.”

From plaintiff’s own testimony, excluding what it contains of a negative character, we may concede that he made a case for himself. The case is this: That the caboose was standing about one hundred and fifty feet east of the platform; that he purchased a ticket entitling him to passage on that train from Dewitt to Carrollton and he then waited on the platform expecting the caboose to be pulled up opposite to the platform, and stopped a sufficient length of time to afford him opportunity to get aboard; that when he discovered-that the caboose would not be stopped at the platform he attempted to get aboard, while it was moving slowly rather than to be left. In conceding that this testimony made out a case for plaintiff we mean it as a concession for the purpose of a discussion of this case and not a -decision; for when one takes passage on a freight train he ought not to expect the same conveniences as when on a regular passenger train, though he must be treated and respected as a passenger by the carrier receiving him as a passenger. Murch v. Railroad, 29 N. H. 9; Thompson on Carriers of Passengers, 235. It is assumed that he will uncomplainingly put up with the inconveniences which reasonably follow such mode of travel. Whitehead v. Railroad, 99 Mo. 263; McGee v. Railroad, 92 Mo. 208. In this instance the caboose, as plaintiff and I believe all the other witnesses state, stood at noon time in front of the hotel about one hundred and fifty feet east of the depot for at least fifteen minutes, and that between the caboose and the [444]*444depot was a, plain, level, smooth and safe pathway leading up to the depot. So, in conceding to plaintiff that the caboose should have been pulled up and stopped at the platform, we do not decide for or against the proposition that defendant discharged its full duty to arriving and departing passengers by stopping the caboose at the point opposite the hotel.

But when we consider what appears in plaintiff’s testimony of a negative character, and compare it with what is shown in the testimony of the other disinterested witnesses it leaves the judgment without support. He says that the caboose was stopped opposite the hotel about one hundred and fifty feet east of the platform when the train first entered Dewitt, and that he got out of the caboose at that point and immediately went up to the ticket office, got his ticket and remained five minutes inside the waiting room. He says he left Miss Barrett, a passenger for Dewitt, m the caboose when he got out; that he did not see her when she got out. She says that the caboose was pulled up to the platform, and that she got out on the platform. Witness Tennison was a departing passenger, and was at the depot. He states that the caboose was at the platform and that he got on at the platform, and that the car was then backed down opposite to the hotel. Witness Sensible was a passenger who had gotten on the train at Brunswick, and was going beyond Dewitt to Wakenda. He says that the caboose was stopped at the platform, and that he got out of the car onto the platform. Witnesses Booth and Winfrey also state that the caboose was stopped at the platform, and all these witnesses say that it was then backed down to the hotel. They are all disinterested parties. Added to these is the testimony to. the same point of all the train force, including the station agent.

[445]*445Plaintiff and two witnesses are all that testify in his behalf, except medical testimony as to the character and extent of his injury, and neither of these states that the caboose was not stopped at the platform. Plaintiff himself says that after he bought his ticket it did not stop at the platform, and that “when I comte out with my ticket the caboose was standing down at the hotel.” He had been in the ivaiting room five minutes. He stated further that he “never saw the caboose stop in front of the depot.” The two other witnesses knew nothing about whether the caboose had been at the platform, as they did not see the train until it had been in, perhaps, fifteen minutes. When we consider that (as plaintiff states) the platform was one hundred and twenty-five or one hundred and fifty feet long, and that (according to plaintiff’s witness Barrett) sixty feet of this was east of the depot, towards the hotel, and that the trainmen were loading and unloading freight at the depot, perhaps from different cars, thus making it necessary to move them (though this does not appear), we can readily see that the caboose could have been pulled up to the east end of the platform, and remain a time ample for passengers to get off and on, and yet plaintiff not see it by reason of being five minutes in the waiting room with the agent. When it is further considered that arriving and departing passengers testify that they got off and on at the platform, and that others saw the car at the platform, we find nothing in plaintiff’s testimony to contradict this, and nothing which can be said to raise a reasonable inference against it.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
51 Mo. App. 438, 1892 Mo. App. LEXIS 458, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hays-v-wabash-railway-co-moctapp-1892.