Herring v. Louisville & Nashville R. R.

70 So. 749, 195 Ala. 422, 1915 Ala. LEXIS 390
CourtSupreme Court of Alabama
DecidedDecember 16, 1915
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 70 So. 749 (Herring v. Louisville & Nashville R. R.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Alabama primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Herring v. Louisville & Nashville R. R., 70 So. 749, 195 Ala. 422, 1915 Ala. LEXIS 390 (Ala. 1915).

Opinion

MAYFIELD, J.

Plaintiff, while a trespasser on defendant’s track, was injured by a passing train; and he seeks to recover damages for the injuries received. The complaint contained two counts — the first declaring specifically on subsequent negligence, the second, on wanton or willful injury. The court gave the affirmative charge for the defendant as to the second count, and the jury found for the defendant as to the first count; and plaintiff prosecutes this appeal. Appellant assigns many errors as to the refusal of charges requested by the plaintiff, and as to the giving of various charges requested by defendant.

The court properly directed the verdict as to the second count. There is certainly no evidence in this record tending to [424]*424establish wanton or intentional injury, as alleged. The plaintiff being concededly a trespasser on the defendant’s track, from the time he went upon it up to the very instant of his injury, and never having attempted to avoid the injury by either stopping, looking, or listening, for trains, but running heedlessly down the track on the ends of the crossties until he was injured, cannot recover, in the absence of wanton or willful wrong. The plaintiff’s negligence in this case, under his own evidence, continued up to the very instant of his injury, and of necessity, and as a matter of fact and of law, both theoretically and practically, it must have been either subsequent to or concurrent with any simple negligence of the defendant. There was no instant when plaintiff’s negligence ceased, and he exercised due care, after which any possible negligence of the defendant could have produced the injury. If he had seen or heard the train, and had attempted to escape the danger, but for some reason could not do so, and the defendant, while or after plaintiff was using due and proper care to avoid injury, was guilty of simple negligence which proximately contributed to the injury complained of, then the plaintiff could recover as for subsequent negligence; but no such case is presented here.

In McWhorter’s Case, 156 Ala. 279, 47 South. 84, the person injured was not a trespasser; he was a flagman, and had a right to be on the tracks for the purpose of flagging the trains, but while on the track he went to sleep, or the evidence tended to show this fact, and the court in that case said: “There was evidence from which the jury could infer that the intestate had fallen asleep, and was not, therefore, conscious of the impending danger, and that a loud blast or blasts of the whistle might have aroused him, and warned him of the approach of the train in time to escape, and which would have required but a slight degree of time and space.”

¡The facts in this case are different: Here there never was a moment, from the time the boy went upon the track until he was struck, when he was not conscious of his danger; each step upon the track was made with the conscious knowledge that he was a trespasser, and therefore a tort-feasor, and liable to be hit by passing trains. His negligence was not less, but greater, at the moment he was hit, than it was when he went upon the track. His negligence consisted, not in his mere going upon the [425]*425track — he had a right to do that, if it was for the purpose of crossing — but in traveling along the track, because in that event he knew it was only a question of time before he would be overtaken by a train, and knew that this time was growing shorter each instant he remained on the track. It was as much, or more, his duty to look and listen for approaching trains the instant he was struck as it was the instant he went upon the track. Surely it cannot be said that if a man goes upon a railroad track, and walks or runs upon it, without looking or listening for trains, until he is overtaken or met by a train, and injured, he is guilty of but one act of negligence, and that is going on the track and then and there failing to stop, look, and listen for approaching trains. If the contrary were true, then it would follow that if he is not injured at the instant he goes upon the track, but is subsequently injured by simple negligence after his peril is discovered, his negligence is no defense; that is to say, if he should remain on the track for a moment, and his peril be discovered by the engineer, who tries to stop the train, instead of sounding the alarm, or does vice versa, when a skilled engineer would have done the other, the railroad company would be liable, unless the continuing wrongdoer actually sees or hears the train, and thus actually becomes conscious of his imminent peril from that particular train. This will not do, because, if he actually knows of the immediate approach of the particular train, and, taking no heed thereof, consciously thereafter remains on the track until he is hit, this would be a wrongful act, but not a negligent act. His wrong in remaining on the track under such conditions would be voluntary and willful, and if he is killed it would clearly be a case of suicide. His act o¡r wrong after becoming conscious of the immediate approach of the train and the impending danger, in order to be negligent,, would be to do the wrong thing, or to be guilty of some negligence by remaining on the track with no effort to escape.

The Alabama cases on this subject, as well as most of the English and American cases up to 1901, are cited and reviewed in one extensive note to the New Hampshire case of Boston & Maine Railroad, reported in 55 L. R. A. 428 to 465. In this note the cases are classified, and apparent conflicts avoided. Cases of injuries to continuous trespassers on the tracks of railroads,, and who are therefore all the while conscious of the immediate [426]*426and impending dangers, until injury is inflicted, are distinguishable from those cases where employees or passengers are injured, but who are guilty of some antecedent negligence, but which is intercepted by a loss of consciousness, as going to sleep, or attempting to avoid the danger or peril, which is prevented by some subsequent act of negligence on the part of the defendant. Cases like the one in question are also distinguishable from those cases in which the plaintiff sees or hears the approaching train, and willfully or consciously fails to avoid the certain and impending collision — cases in which, if death should result, it would be nothing less than suicide. Where the plaintiff’s negligence continues up to the very instant of the injury, and is contributory to his injury, then, of course, he cannot recover, in the absence of wanton or willful injury on the part of defendant. The plaintiff’s negligence, however, does not contribute to his own injury if, after first placing himself in peril, he thereafter employs proper diligence to extricate himself from the peril, and the defendant thereafter neglects to use proper diligence which would probably prevent the injury. The law on this subject was well expressed by this court in Tanner’s Case, 60 Ala. 638, 641: “If those in charge of a train, even in the rightful exercise of their skill and diligence, find a person dangerously exposed, although such exposure was brought about by the negligence of such person, the duty of diligence resting on the officers of the train is not in the least diminished on that account. In such case, although they will stand acquitted of all blame in this first stage of the peril, yet when the peril has become reasonably manifest, so as to create the presumption that it was comprehended, each party must again be diligent to prevent the catastrophe.

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Bluebook (online)
70 So. 749, 195 Ala. 422, 1915 Ala. LEXIS 390, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/herring-v-louisville-nashville-r-r-ala-1915.