Peterie v. Metropolitan Street Railway Co.

164 S.W. 254, 177 Mo. App. 359, 1914 Mo. App. LEXIS 72
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedMarch 2, 1914
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 164 S.W. 254 (Peterie v. Metropolitan Street Railway 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
Peterie v. Metropolitan Street Railway Co., 164 S.W. 254, 177 Mo. App. 359, 1914 Mo. App. LEXIS 72 (Mo. Ct. App. 1914).

Opinions

TRIMBLE, J.

Defendant operated a double track electric railway between Kansas City and Independence. At a public road crossing tbereon, one of defendant’s cars struck an empty lumber wagon driven by plaintiff, throwing it to one side and severely- injuring plaintiff. He sued for damages on the ground that the injuries were caused by the negligence of defendant under the humanitarian rule. The jury found in favor of plaintiff and defendant appealed.

The collision occurred on the afternoon of February 26, 1910. The county road, at the point in question, is macadamized and runs east and west. The two tracks of the railway run north and south and cross the county road at right angles. The car that did the damage was running south on the west track and struck the rear end of plaintiff’s wagon as it was travelling westward over the'crossing. As the wagon was struck on the rear end and thrown to the west side of the track, the car must have struck it just at the moment it was about to clear the west or last track to be crossed. The speed of the car in approaching the crossing was twenty-five miles per hour and the evidence tends to show that this speed was not reduced until the instant of the collision.

As plaintiff approached the crossing from the east there was nothing to prevent him from seeing the car nor the motorman from seeing his wagon, and each testified that he first became aware of the approach, of the other vehicle when the car, which was running up grade, was two hundred feet from the crossing. Plaintiff says that his team then was ten feet from the east track, and, as the two tracks were nine feet apart, the heads of his horses were about twenty-four feet, and the rear axle of his wagon (over which he was sitting) [362]*362was about forty-nine feet, from the west track, which, as stated, was the track on which the car was approaching.

The team was going in an ordinary walk, and, concluding he had ample time to cross ahead of the car, plaintiff looked in the opposite direction to ascertain whether or not a car was coming on the east track. There was a substation, or power house, at the southeast corner of the intersection and plaintiff claims that he had to look southward until he passed from behind the power house before he could be sure that his crossing would not be endangered by a northbound car and that he did so look. Then he looked northward and saw that the approaching car was only forty feet away and was coming on with unabated speed. At that time, however, the front wheels of his wagon had just passed over the west rail of the first track and his team was at the east rail of the west track and, of course, in the way of the oncoming car. His wag’on had been lengthened to carry lumber and the distance from the heads of the horses to his position over the rear axle was about twenty-five feet. Fearing a collision and thinking he could not avoid it by backing the team or trying to turn them to one side, he urged them forward and had almost succeeded in clearing the track when the car struck the rear end of the wagon. Other witnesses introduced by plaintiff corroborate his statements that the motorman did not attempt to slacken speed before the collision, nor give any warning signals.

The motorman says the car was going twenty-five miles an hour and that the car was two hundred feet from the crossing when he first observed plaintiff approaching it. (This is the distance the car was from the crossing when plaintiff says he first saw it). But in other respects the motorman’s vision differs from that of the plaintiff. The motorman says that when he saw plaintiff approaching, he sounded the gong, [363]*363and that plaintiff stopped his team in a place of safety and waited until the car was forty feet from the crossing when he suddenly started forward and attempted to cross in front of the car and that as soon as he did that, the witness exerted himself to the utmost to stop the car but was unable to avoid the collision which, he says, occurred between the car and the front end of the wagon. The testimony of the motorman is supported by that of other witnesses introduced by defendant.

"We must, however, accept plaintiff’s version of what he did rather than the motorman’s, as the jury found for plaintiff, thus requiring us to give full weight and credit to all of plaintiff’s evidence and to every inference which can be legally drawn therefrom.

The first point urged by defendant is that the petition states no cause of action because it is a felo de se. That is, that the petition contains two different allegations of negligence which are necessarily so repugnant to each other as to be mutually destructive. To be so, they must be such that if one is true the other must necessarily be untrue. The point is based upon defendant’s claim that the petition, when analyzed, contains twp specificatipns pf negligence, to-wit, first, that the motorman could have stopped the car after he saw, or by the exercise of ordinary care could have seen, plaintiff in a perilous and helpless situation, and negligently failed to do so; second, that he was running the car at such high speed that he could not stop. Of course, if the petition, in one breath, charged the motorman with negligence in failing to stop the car, and in the next breath with negligence in running the car at such high speed that he could not stop it, the petition on its face would contain mutually destructive allegations. In that case, it would state no cause of action whatever, but would be a felo de se as held in the case of Raming v. Railway, 157 Mo. 477, l. c. 508, and in Gabriel v. Railway, 130 Mo. App. 651, [364]*364l. c. 654. But we do not think the petition in this case contains specifications of negligence that are necessarily contradictory. In the first place, the petition is entitled to a liberal construction and to every reasonable intendment in its favor since it was not challenged in any way until after verdict. [Smith v. Railroad, 129 Mo. App. 413, l. c. 422; Price v. Maryville, 161 S. W. 295.] It is true a petition that destroys itself is no petition, and therefore states no cause of action; and a petition which states no cause of action presents a defect the fatality of which can be raised in any court and at any stage of the case. [Chandler v. Railway, 251 Mo. 592.] But this does not interfere with the rule that a petition that is not attacked until after verdict entitled to every reasonable intendment in its favor in determining whether or not it states a cause of action. Without using much liberality, we do not think the petition is self destructive. In reality there is but one act of negligence charged, that of negligence under the humanitarian rule. The allegations thought to be conflicting, when read in the light of their context, amount to nothing more than an assertion that the motorman did not immediately proceed to bring his car under control after he discovered,, or should have discovered, the peril of plaintiff. This ■construction of the petition is further borne out by the fact that this was the sole issue, as to negligence, contained in the instructions upon which the case was submitted to the jury. Even if the petition, in one view, may appear to contain two separate grounds of negligence in one count which seem repugnant, in the absence of any objection thereto before verdict, we are uot disposed to look with favor upon an objection made after that time unless the petition is so utterly defective as to state absolutely no cause of action. [Stiller v. Railway, 159 Mo. App. 452; Flynn v. Railway, 166 Mo. App. 182.]

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Bluebook (online)
164 S.W. 254, 177 Mo. App. 359, 1914 Mo. App. LEXIS 72, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/peterie-v-metropolitan-street-railway-co-moctapp-1914.