Mobile & Ohio R. R. v. Thomas

42 Ala. 672
CourtSupreme Court of Alabama
DecidedJune 15, 1868
StatusPublished
Cited by47 cases

This text of 42 Ala. 672 (Mobile & Ohio R. R. v. Thomas) 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
Mobile & Ohio R. R. v. Thomas, 42 Ala. 672 (Ala. 1868).

Opinion

A. J. WALKER, C. J.

The first ground of demurrer amounts to nothing more than a general demurrer, and there could be no error in overruling it. — Robbins v. Mendenhall, 35 Ala. 722; Helvenstein v. Higgason, ib. 259; Burns v. Mayor of Mobile, 34 Ala. 485.

The complaint is not obnoxious to the objection for uncertainty made by the second and seventh assignments of demurrer. It was not incumbent upon the plaintiff to specify the place where the injury alleged was sustained, and, therefore, the third assignment of demurrer was not well taken.

The sixth assignment of demurrer is as follows: “ It appears that plaintiff was an employee of the company, and the matters alleged do not make such a case as will charge defendant.” The specified fault imputed by the complaint in this assignment, is, that the plaintiff was an employee of the company. Forbearing verbal criticism, we understand the objection to raise the question, whether the condition of employee of the defendant corporation, at the time of the alleged injury averred by the plaintiff, is a legal reason [714]*714why liability should not result from the cause alleged in the complaint. The cause, from which the defendant’s liability is attempted to be deduced in the complaint, is that the plaintiff was injured by an engine’s running off the track of defendant’s road, and that the engine ran off the track, and the injury was suffered “ because of the wrong and gross negligence of defendant in running on said road such engine, which was out of order and unsafe, and unfit to be in said business, and which, but for the want of proper care and diligence, would have been known to defendant, and all of which was unknown to plaintiff.” The injury is, in this allegation, attributed to the gross negligence of the defendant in running an engine out of order, unsafe, and unfit, and it is averred that the condition and character of the engine were unknown to the plaintiff, and would have been known to the defendant but for the want of proper care and diligence. There can be no doubt that a railroad company is responsible for injuries to their servants resulting from its negligence. If the defendant was negligent in putting the engine upon the track, and if, in addition thereto, it would, but for the want of proper care and diligence, have known the. deficiency of the engine, they are liable.— Williams v. Taylor, 4 Porter, 234; Walker v. Bolling, 22 Ala. 294; Cook & Scott v. Parham, 24 Ala. 21; Perry v. Marsh, 25 Ala. 659. The case of Williams v. Taylor, supra, lays down a rule which would make the defendant liable only where the negligence was gross. The two later cases of Walker v. Bolling, and Cook & Scott v. Parham, exact, for the absolution of the master from liability, only ordinary diligence. The latter rule is the true one. The courts are now inclined to abandon the distinction between negligence, or want of reasonable care and diligence, and gross negligence, as too fine for practical application. — 2 Redfield on Bailways, 201, § 211. The complaint seems to have been framed to meet the more stringent rule. The complaint was not obnoxious to any of the objections made in the assignments of grounds of demurrer. See Noyes v. Smith, 28 Vermont, 59 ; Buzzell v. Laconia Manufacturing Co., 48 Maine, 113 ; Bryon v. N. Y. S. P. T. Co., 26, Barbour, 39.

[715]*715The court gave, at the request of the plaintiff, nine several charges, and gave one charge besides, and imposed a qualification upon a charge given upon the defendant’s request, and refused three charges requested by the defendant, which are numbered two, three and four. These fourteen rulings we proceed to consider separately in the order in which they are named above.

1. The first charge given was as follows : “ It was • the duty of the defendant to have on the road suitable and proper engines, and to keep them in such condition, that unusual risks would not attend those who were employed to perform service on them ; and if they did not in this case have such an engine, and the plaintiff was ignorant of any defect in the engine, the burden is on the defendant to show that they used due caution and diligence in the matter.”

The defendant was liable to its servants for injuries resulting from its negligence. When passengers on a railroad are injured in consequence of a defect in any instrument employed by it, it is a presumption, disputable but not conclusive, that the injury resulted from negligence. 2 Redfield on Railways, 190, § 11; Hand S. R. R. Co. v. Higgins, 5 Am. Law Reg. 715 ; S. C., Redfield on Railways, 533, § 131; S. C., 36 Mo. 418 ; Edgerton v. N. Y. & H. R. Co., 35 Barb. 193 ; Curtis v. R. & S. R. Co., 18 N. Y. 534.

But the same principle does not prevail in reference to servants of a railroad, as we shall see. ' The established doctrine of the law unquestionably is, that the onus of proving negligence is upon the injured servant. — 2 Redfield on Railways, 200, § 15 ; Perkins v. E. R. Co. & B. M. R. Co., 29 Maine, 307 ; S. C., 1 Am. Railway Cases, 144.

Our own decisions in M. & O. R. Co. v. Jarboe, mss., (1 Div., 30th April, 1868,) and Steel & Burgess v. Townsend, 37 Ala. 247, are not opposed to that proposition. In those cases the question was, whether a loss of goods, or injury to them, was within an exception to a contract of affreightment ; and it was held that the onus of proving that the loss or injury came within the exception was upon the common carrier ; that it did not fall within the exception, unless due care and diligence had been used, and that therefore [716]*716the onus of proving such care and diligence was upon the carrier.

The charge here, however, was not that the onus of proof of care and diligence was upon the defendant, but that it was cast upon it by a failure to have a suitable and proper engine. It bases the proposition that the onus of proof is shifted to the defendant upon the assumption of its absolute duty to have a suitable and proper engine, as contradistingushed from its duty to use due and proper care and diligence to have such engine. Does the law impose upon a railroad corporation such absolute duty to its servants, or does it only impose the duty of using due diligence to have a suitable and proper engine ? If the former question be answered in the affirmative, then the defendant guarantees absolutely to its servants the proper quality of all its engines, and it is liable, notwithstanding the utmost care and diligence is used. We can perceive no reason to support the conclusion, that the badness of the engine could create the presumption of negligence, and have the effect of shifting the onus of proof from the servant to the carrier. If the assumption that it was the absolute duty of the defendant to have a suitable and proper engine be correct, then the court has made an unmerited concession to the defendant in only deducing the inference that the onus of proof was changed. Upon that assumption he should have drawn the inference of an unqualified liability, and in that view the charge would be too favorable to the defendant, and he would not object to it.

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Bluebook (online)
42 Ala. 672, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mobile-ohio-r-r-v-thomas-ala-1868.