Monroe v. United Railways Co.

133 S.W. 645, 154 Mo. App. 39, 1910 Mo. App. LEXIS 854
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedDecember 30, 1910
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 133 S.W. 645 (Monroe v. United Railways 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
Monroe v. United Railways Co., 133 S.W. 645, 154 Mo. App. 39, 1910 Mo. App. LEXIS 854 (Mo. Ct. App. 1910).

Opinion

REYNOLDS, P. J.

(after stating- the facts).-Counsel for appellant assign eleven errors. The first, second, third, fourth and eleventh are to alleged, errors in the several instructions given at the instance of plaintiff. The fifth, sixth, seventh and ninth errors are assigned to the admission of the testimony of the two physicians. The eighth is in permitting plaintiff’s husband to testify that plaintiff had sent him to the physician for medicine and that he had procured medicine from the physician on prescriptions which he gave plaintiff. The tenth assigned error is in refusing defendant’s second, third, fourth and seventh instructions.

We are compelled to dispose of the errors assigned to the instructions given at the instance of the plaintiff on the authority of the decision of the Supreme Court of this state in the case of Sheets v. Insurance Co., 226 Mo. 613, 126 S. W. 413. We have, in a case passed on at this same term of court, that of Stevens v. Knights of the Modern Maccabees, had occasion to refer to this decision and to hold, on the authority of it, that instructions cannot be noticed when objection was not made at the time they were asked to their being given. ' We must adhere to that rule as announced and settled by our Supreme Court in the Sheets Case.

In the case of Union Loan, Storage & Mercantile Co. v. Farbstein, 148 Mo. App. 216, 127 S. W. 656, treating of the point arising- over the bill of exceptions in that case, as to exceptions to instructions, we held that the matter of noting exceptions was primarily for the trial court,’ and that court having stated in the bill of exceptions itself that he had, following the rule of his court, allowed exceptions to be noted as having been made to the giving and refusing- of instructions, his action was conclusive on us. But this does not reach the case at bar. In that case the rule of court invoked applied to exceptions both to the giv[61]*61ing and refusing of instructions after they had been given, as well as to exceptions to the. action of the court in passing on objections. The rule covering these was distinctly found, and acting on it, the trial court allowed exceptions to be incorporated in the bill of exceptions which he signed. In the case at bar there is no suggestion whatever found in the bill of exceptions before us, as abstracted, and under a like rule of the circuit court of the city of St. Louis in force as to objections to instructions, objections had been made. Although we held in the Farbstein Case, supra, that where there is a rule of that court whereby objections and exceptions are assumed to have been saved to the giving or refusal of instructions, and that acting on it, the trial court allowed exceptions to be noted, we are not holding that when objections or exceptions are not in the bill of exceptions, we will assume that there was either because of the rule. The rule justifies the trial judge in allowing objections or exceptions to be noted in the bill. "When they appear' in the bill before us, we notice them, not because of the rule but because the trial court had allowed them to appear in this bill. .Our Supreme Court has expressly denied the power of a, court, by rule or practice, to dispense with the necessity of objections to instructions or to evidence, and held that any such rule would not be recognized by an appellate court. [Green v. Terminal R. R. Assn., 211 Mo. 16, l. c. 34, 109 S. W. 716.] In that ease no exception appeared in the bill, but counsel invoked the rule of the trial court. The Supreme Court refused to recognize it. In the case at bar it is nowhere recited in the abstract of the bill of exceptions, that any objections were made, or understood to have been made to the instructions, prior to their being given. Hence the ruling in the Farbstein case is not applicable to the facts in the case at bar. [62]*62That ruling is however applicable to another phase of this case as will be hereafter noted.

Touching the instructions given at the instance of the defendant, we agree with counsel that it is not to be understood that a defendant acquiesces in the theory of the case presented by plaintiff’s instruction by ashing countervailing instructions. [Clancy v. St. Louis Transit Co., 192 Mo. 615, 91 S. W. 509.] But even without any consideration of the instructions given at the instance of plaintiff, and without holding that defendant is precluded by its own instructions, from attaching the instructions given at the instance of plaintiff, and accepting defendant’s instructions, as it urges us, merely as countervailing the instructions of plaintiff, we hold that the instructions given at the instance of defendant presented the defense to the jury in the most favorable and forceful manner possible, short of a direction for a verdict for defendant. We are not to be considered as approving the instructions given for plaintiff — we merely treat them as given without objection, and hence not open to attach here. In point of fact we thinh the instructions given for and at the instance of defendant, entirely too favorable to defendant and as not in line with authority, as we shall notice later when passing on the refused instructions.

Proper exception has been saved to the refusal of the four instructions ashed by the defendant. We have set them out and are unable to concur with counsel in their contention that it was error to refuse them. Nor do we thinh that the decisions cited by them, namely, Jackson v. Grand Avenue Ry. Co., 118 Mo. 199, 24 S. W. 192; Murphy v. Metropolitan St. R. Co., 125 Mo. App. 269, 102 S. W. 64, support the contention of defendant’s counsel. The error of these refused instructions is that they leave out of view the proposition that notwithstanding the fact that the usual stopping place of this car may have- been on the north side of [63]*63Olive street, yet if in point of fact it stopped south of there and plaintiff was led to believe that it was in obedience to her signal and to give her an opportunity to alight, it was negligence on the part of the defendant to allow the car to start while she was in the act of alighting, if that is a fact. In the case of Jackson v. Railroad, supra, Judge Gantt who delivered the opinion, refers to' and quotes the case of Railroad v. Mills, 105 Ill. 63, as holding that the car being stopped from whatever cause, at a place where passengers were in the habit of alighting, she had the undoubted right to alight without making any request, and if the defendant’s servants knew, or by the exercise of due care, would have known of it, it was negligence on their part to start the car before she had a reasonable time in which to alight. Judge Gantt says that with this rule our court fully agrees, but that in the case before him the evidence shows no such habit by the passengers as to put the servants in charge of this ear upon notice of their desire to get off at the place plaintiff was hurt. In the case at bar there was such evidence, given by several witnesses.

In Murphy v. Railroad, supra, the rule is stated to be that where a person in charge of a car has actual knowledge of the fact that passengers are alighting, his duty to them is the same, whether the stop is made at a regular stopping place, or at some other. In the case at bar there is the evidence of several witnesses, to the fact that the conductor in charge of this car had actual knowledge of the intention of the plaintiff to alight at the place where the car was stopped south of the crossing.

We are referred by counsel for the plaintiff to a later Illinois case than that cited and quoted with approval by Judge Gantt, namely West Chicago Street Railroad Co. v. Manning, 170 Ill. 417.

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Related

Carroll v. United Railways Co.
137 S.W. 303 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1911)
Chamlee v. Planters Hotel Co.
134 S.W. 123 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1911)
Parker v. United Railways Co.
133 S.W. 137 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1910)

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Bluebook (online)
133 S.W. 645, 154 Mo. App. 39, 1910 Mo. App. LEXIS 854, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/monroe-v-united-railways-co-moctapp-1910.