Illinois Central Railroad v. Smith

85 Miss. 349

• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Decided: November 15, 1904
• Status: Published

Opinion

Truly, J.,

delivered the opinion of the court.

Appellee, a minor, eighteen years of age, desiring to travel from Winona to Durant, in this state, applied to the agent of appellant to purchase a ticket, tendering proper fare. This was refused him on the ground that he was blind and unaccompanied by an assistant, and, under an existing rule of the railroad company, was not entitled to transportation. Appellee claimed that he was an experienced traveler, able to care for himself and needing no assistance. He offered to produce his order book to show that he was in the habit of traveling and booking orders for goods, but the agent persisted in his refusal. Thereby appellee was forced to change his route and travel over another railway. He brought suit against appellant, claiming both actual and punitive damages. The actual damage proven was small. The jury awarded punitive damages under the instructions of the court, and the Illinois Central Railroad Company appealed.

Several instructions were granted appellee, embodying the same general idea. The first and fifth will sufficiently illustrate the main propositions presented for consideration. They are as follows:

“No. 1. The court instructs the jury that if they believe that the plaintiff, J. IT. Smith, on the 19th day of January, 1903, applied to the defendant’s ticket agent at Winona, Mississippi, at the proper time and place and in the proper manner, for the purchase of a railroad ticket from Winona, Mississippi, to Durant, Mississippi, then and there tendering the requisite amount of cash fare, as alleged in the plaintiff’s declaration, and that said agent then and there refused to sell plaintiff a ticket as requested for no other reason than that the plaintiff was blind, and that the plaintiff, although blind, was in fact otherwise qualified to travel, the defendant is guilty of a wrong, and they should find for the plaintiff, and assess his damages at such sum as they may think proper from all the evidence, not exceeding the sum sued for — to wit, $1,500.

“No. 5. The court instructs the jury, for the plaintiff, that a common carrier of passengers cannot refuse to carry a person, otherwise qualified, upon the sole ground that he is blind; and if a common carrier willfully refuses so to do, it is liable for punitive damages.”

The general rule in force in this state is that which is embodied in the text and accurately stated in 5 Am. & Eng. Ency. law, p. 538, note 4: “While persons'who are ill have a right to enter and travel upon the conveyances of a common carrier of passengers, nevertheless the carrier is not bound to accept as a passenger, without an attendant, one who, because of physical or mental disability, is unable to take care of himself; but should the carrier voluntarily accept as a passenger such a person without an attendant, his. inability to care for himself, rendering special care and assistance necessary, being apparent or made known at the time of his application for carriage to the servants of the carrier, the latter will be held responsible if such care and assistance are not afforded.” See also Weightman v. Railroad, 70 Miss., 563 (12 South. Rep., 586; 19 L. R. A., 671; 35 Am. St. Rep., 660); Sevier v. Railroad, 61 Miss., 8 (48 Am. St. Rep., 74); Railroad v. Stathan, 42 Miss., 607 (97 Am. Dec., 478). This rule recognizes the authority of the carrier to exclude and deny transportation to any person desiring passage who, on account of physical or mental disability, is unable to care for himself, or liable on account of that incapacity to become a burden upon his fellow-passengers or to require extra attention from the carrier. But inasmuch as experience has shown that many persons seemingly incapacitated by physical disability are in truth perfectly competent to travel alone, the courts, in the interest of the traveling public, have -modified the rigor and limited the otherwise universal application-of the rule by providing that any person desiring transportation shall be entitled to passage upon payment of fare, notwithstanding his seeming incapacity, if, as a matter of fact, he be competent to travel alone without requiring other care than that which the law requires the carrier to bestow upon all its passengers alike; and if this proof of capacity be in any manner brought to the knowledge of the agent of the carrier, the carrier is liable in damages for any exclusion from its trains. This is the evident meaning of the opinion of this court in the case .of Zachary v. Railroad, 75 Miss., 751 (23 South. Rep., 435; 41 L. R. A., 385; 65 Am. St. Rep., 617), where, through Whitfield, Justice, it is said: “Each case must depend on its own facts, and the reasonableness of the refusal to sell a blind person a ticket must on principle depend not on a universal, arbitrary, and undiscriminating rule like this one, but on the capacity to travel, unaccompanied, of the particular blind person, as shown by the proof on that point in his case.” Primarily the affliction of blindness unfits every person for safe travel by railway, if unaccompanied. No blind person without previous experience could possibly accommodate himself to the many exigencies incident to travel by railroad, or guard himself against peril in boarding and alighting from trains, changing from one train to another, or threading his. way in safety across the railway tracks at crowded stations. Hence the rule which provides that every blind person is presumed to be, in the absence of proof of experience, unfit to travel alone, is not unreasonable. Nor do we consider such a regulation a hardship upon the persons afflicted with blindness of other disabling physical infirmity. It is rather a safeguard thrown around them for their own protection. Therefore, when a blind person applies to purchase a ticket, being himself unknown to the agent, and that ticket is refused, the carrier is not liable by this act alone to be mulcted in damages; but, as before indicated, if the agent of the carrier knows of his personal knowledge of the competency to travel of the particular person, or if the fact of such ability is made known to him in any manner, and he still persists wantonly and arbitrarily in his refusal to sell the person desiring passage a ticket, the carrier may be made to respond in damages for his oppressive act. And it is the duty of the agent of the carrier to listen to the explanation made by the person desiring to purchase a ticket, and judge of his competency in the light of the facts then made known to him, and the question of the reasonableness or unreasonableness of his refusal is one of fact to be submitted to the jury, should litigation arise; and if it should appear that such refusal was reasonable uiider the circumstances, as they then existed to the knowledge of the agent, the carrier would not be liable to damages; but, as in every other case, if it should develop that his action was caused by wantonness or a desire to arbitrarily injure, humiliate, or oppress the proposed passenger by such action, the carrier would be responsible, and would be liable both to compensatory and punitive damages. In the instant case it will, be observed that the first instruction set out above told the jury that if they believed the agent refused to sell plaintiff a ticket on the sole ground that he was blind, and that if they further believed that the plaintiff, “although blind, was in fact otherwise qualified to travel,” then, these two facts being established, the railroad was convicted of a wrong, and the jury was authorized to find for plaintiff, and to assess his damages “at such sum as they may think proper from all the evidence, not exceeding the sum sued for.” An inspection of the record shows that there was no dispute as to the fact that the agent’s refusal to sell appellee a ticket was “for no other reason than that the plaintiff was blind;” so the first instruction in effect directed the jury to inflict such damages as they thought proper, from the evidence, upon the railroad company, if they, the jury, believed that the plaintiff, although blind, “was otherwise qualified to travel.”

The fifth instruction was to the effect that if a common carrier willfully refused to carry a person otherwise qualified, on the sole ground that he is blind, it was “liable for punitive damages.” Both instructions are erroneous for want of the same limitation — i. e., that the agent of the railroad knew, or had reasonable grounds to believe, or from circumstances within his knowledge ought to have known, that the person demanding transportation, although blind, was otherwise qualified to travel. The infliction of punitive damages is authorized where an employe of a carrier knowingly and wantonly refuses to do some act which his duty requires that he shall perform, and is not properly predicable of a fact unless proof of its existence is brought to the knowledge of'the acting party. In this case, under the general rule hereinbefore announced, when the appellee demanded the right to purchase a ticket and become a passenger, while unattended by an assistant, the agent was acting within the scope of a reasonable regulation, designed for the protection of all persons suffering from disabling physical infirmities, when he refused to sell the ticket, and the fact, if fact it was, that appellee was in truth qualified to travel alone, unless brought to the knowledge of the agent, placed no additional liability upon the appellant. No matter how thoroughly competent appellee may have been to travel unattended or how extensive his traveling experience, unless the agent either knew, or from circumstances of which he had notice ought to have known, of this competency and previous experience, the mere existence of these facts could not in any way impute wrongfulness to an act committed in ignorance of them. If the agent of a railroad company refuses wantonly and arbitrarily to sell a ticket to a blind man, knowing at the time that such person is a thoroughly competent traveler, then the carrier would be liable to punitive damages, and the mere fact of blindness, and the apparent existence of a disability which the agent knew was only apparent and not actual, would not excuse or justify the oppressive act. But the two instructions under review ignore this vital element, and authorize the jury to inflict punitive damages upon the appellant for the commission of an act by its employe when, so far as the instructions show, the employe may not have known of the existence of the very fact which rendered his action in refusing the ticket wrong, if wrong it was.

As the case must be remanded for a new trial, we refrain from any comment upon the testimony as to whether the evidence proved that the appellee was competent to travel alone or whether the facts made known to the agent of the appellant were such as should have led him to infer such competency on the part of appellee.

Reversed> cmd remanded for a new trial.