Perryman v. Missouri Pacific Railroad

31 S.W.2d 4, 326 Mo. 176, 1930 Mo. LEXIS 799
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedSeptember 4, 1930
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 31 S.W.2d 4 (Perryman v. Missouri Pacific Railroad) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Perryman v. Missouri Pacific Railroad, 31 S.W.2d 4, 326 Mo. 176, 1930 Mo. LEXIS 799 (Mo. 1930).

Opinion

*179 ATWOOD, P. J.

This is¡ an appeal from a judgment for damages on account of the death of J. D. Perryman, who while working for defendant Missouri Pacific Railroad Company as a car repairer, was killed in defendant’s yards at Poplar Bluff, Missouri, on May 7, 1927, when an iced refrigerator car loaded with onions fell upon him. The petition was in conventional form and the answer was a general denial.

The evidence showed that this ear was being used in interstate commerce, enroute from Odin, Texas, to St. Louis, Missouri. At Poplar Bluff the ear was cut out of the train and placed on what is referred to as defendant’s rip track on account of one or more flat wheels on one of its trucks. The repair job was one that required haste, and two crews were put on the job. The car was run on the rip track, which extended in a north-and-south direction, and only a short distance from defendant’s supply house, where all repair supplies were kept. The wheels on the truck on the south end of the car were the ones giving the trouble, and in order to remove them it was necessary to jack up the south end of the car for a distance of eight inches or more, for the purpose of lifting the king bolt, so the trucks could be rolled southward and from under the ear. The ear was of the whale-belly type, that is, it had a long metal beam about eighteen inches wide, consisting of two pieces, which extended underneath the car from -one end to the other, presenting a level portion for a distance of twelve to fourteen feet *180 and gradually sloping to a feather edge at each end. The method of removing wheels from ears of this' character, under the foreman then in charge and pursuant to his orders and directions, as applied to this particular car, was to jack up the south end, by placing a jack under the southeast corner and one under the southwest corner of the car, and raising it to the height desired, by operating both jacks at the same time. It was Perryman’s duty to take his sledge hammer and other necessary tools and go under the car and disconnect certain rods which, with the aid of the king pin, held the trucks of the ear in place. Pursuant to his foreman’s orders, either given at the time or prior thereto, he went under the car and disconnected the rods in question. Instead of using horses by placing them under both sides of the ear or cribbing under both sides of the car to support it and keep it from falling when the trucks were removed, defendant adopted the method of building but one cribbing to hold the car, and that under the whale-belly toward the south end of the car. Experts testified that cribbing the car - in this way was not customary and was improper and dangerous, and that either horses should be used or cribbing built under each side of the car. The thing that would render this method of cribbing dangerous would be something connected with the car itself and which would not be open to the observation of the men constructing the cribbing. In order for this method to be effective and hold the car in place, everything would have to be just right. Tf the car was not properly balanced, or if the load had shifted, or if the ice had melted more on one side than on the other, or if the whale-belly was uneven or loose, or if the back wheels moved, then the car was likely to fall, as in this instance it did. Defendant’s foreman ordered Perryman to build the crib in this manner, and he complied with the order, and while he was under the car it fell upon and killed him.

Appellant’s first assignment of error is as follows:

“The court erred in allowing incompetent and prejudicial testimony on the part of the plaintiff to go to the jury over the objections and exceptions of defendant, by the expert witnesses, by allowing them to give their opinion based on what ^he exper£s may have heard the other witnesses say as f° the manner ot jacking up and cribbing the car; also in basing their opinions on how they, the experts, would have done it; also’in allowing them to describe a method which was absolutely safe instead of reasonably safe.”

The following question is illustrative of those cited under the above objections:

“Q. Assuming that an A. R. T. car on a level track, on a track running north-and-soutli, a jack at the southeast corner and a jack at the southwest corner, a cribbing constructed under the whale-belly part of the car with timber, say, twenty inches long and twelve inches *181 wide and three inches thick, in the manner described by witnesses Brown and G-reen, who have testified, I will ask! yon whether, in your opinion, such manner of cribbing that car would be proper or not?”

Similar objections were urged in Meily v. Railroad, 215 Mo. 567, 593, 114 S. W. 1013, and we there said:

“It has never been controverted that the opinion of expert witnesses must be based upon the facts of the case as shown to exist by the other evidence in the -case, but there has been some contrariety of opinion as to how the facts of the case should be presented to the mind of the witness upon which to base his opinion. But long ago the courts and text-writers of this country have said that it may be done in two ways: first, by propounding hypothetical questions embracing all the facts of the case which the evidence of either party to the case tends to prove — the question must assume that those facts are true, and upon the assumed facts the witness must base his answer; and, second, in certain classes of cases, as in the application of mechanical appliances, where the evidence of the case shows the character of the appliances used and that the witnesses are familiar with those appliances, and that they know from their own knowledge and experience the proper and safe way of operating them, then the overwhelming weight of authority is to the effect that a general question may be asked regarding the proper and safe way to operate them, the question assuming without so stating that the witness has the knowledge and experience regarding the matters which the evidence tends to show he possesses. [Kaminski v. Tudor Iron Works, 167 Mo. l. c. 466; Longan v. Weltmer, 180 Mo. l. c. 340.]”

Also in 3 Jones’s Commentaries on Evidence (2 Ed.) 2434, sec. 1331, it is said:

“In several jurisdictions the trial court, in its discretion, and as a matter of convenience, may allow the hypothesis to be put to the witness by referring him to the testimony, if he has heard it, predicating the injury upon the assumption that the facts heard or read are true instead of requiring counsel to recapitulate. Thus, if the expert has heard a deposition read, or has heard the testimony of a witness, or even of several witnesses in which no conflict appears, and if such testimony is not voluminous, he may give an opinion based on the assumption that such evidence is true. Likewise, where there is no conflict as to the material facts, the question need not be hypothetical in form. Under such circumstances the situation is really the same as though the evidentiary facts were restated to the witness in the form of a hypothetical question, bpt without the delay attendant upon the latter forni.”

*182

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Bluebook (online)
31 S.W.2d 4, 326 Mo. 176, 1930 Mo. LEXIS 799, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/perryman-v-missouri-pacific-railroad-mo-1930.