Prewitt v. Eddy

21 S.W. 742, 115 Mo. 283, 1893 Mo. LEXIS 53
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedMarch 25, 1893
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 21 S.W. 742 (Prewitt v. Eddy) 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
Prewitt v. Eddy, 21 S.W. 742, 115 Mo. 283, 1893 Mo. LEXIS 53 (Mo. 1893).

Opinion

Gtanxt, P. J.

This action was commenced in the circuit; court of Pettis county for damages, caused by a train of cars operated by defendants, in the' city of Moberly, striking plaintiff and seriously injuring him. The answer was a general denial and contributory negligence.

The ordinances of the city prohibited trains running over six miles an hour.

Plaintiff also introduced in evidence a plat of a portion of the M. K. & T. Railroad and the surrounding grounds in the city of Moberly, and introduced as a witness a Mr. Perris, who had made said plat, and explained the same to the following effect:

The M. K. & T. Railroad runs nearly east and west through that portion of Moberly; along the south side of the railroad is Reed street; crossing the railroad at about right angles is Bertley street running north and south. There is no other street or crossing between Bertley street and the eastern city limits. Along the south side of the railroad are several houses occupied by negroes, and some vacant lots, the easternmost house being occupied by a negro woman named Sue Roberts. Prom her lot running westerly about in a line of Reed street is a wagon road. The railroad track from Bertley street to Sue Roberts’ house is upon a fill, varying from five to twelve feet in height. East of Bertley street about one hundred and ninety feet is a bridge over a culvert or ravine, about thirty-three feet in length. Near the east end of this bridge is the point [290]*290at which the plaintiff was struck by the engine. About seventy-five feet west from Sue Roberts’ gate is a white telegraph pole, mentioned in the evidence. Some distance west of this pole a path leaves the above mentioned wagon road in a northwesterly direction and enters upon the railroad track at about two hundred and seventy feet west of the white telegraph pole, and about one hundred feet east from the bridge above mentioned. About five hundred yards east of Sue Roberts’ house the railroad track curves around a high piece of ground, and a train can be seen coming from the east about three hundred and eighty yards distant by persons standing at Sue Roberts’ gate. The track is up grade coming west from fifty to sixty-five feet per mile; upon the north side of the track are some lots with houses on some of them fronting upon Roberts street, and having the rear toward the railroad.

The testimony shows that on the thirteenth of August, 1889, the plaintiff, who lived several miles out of town, had gone to the town of Moberly where the county fair was in progress; he admitted that during the day he had taken two drinks of whiskey and several drinks of beer, and had spent a good part of the day in and about the various saloons of the town, but he claimed he had not drunk anything after about one o’clock in the day and that he was not under the influence of liquor at the time of the accident. Sue Roberts, to whom he talked just before the accident, said that she did not notice that he was drunk, as did one or two other witnesses. Others stated that before and ■after the accident they could smell liquor upon his breath, and he admitted in his testimony that it was ■quite common for him to get drunk when he went to Moberly, and that he had been arrested and put in the ■calaboose several times for drunkeness, but he claimed that he did not get drunk every time he went to town. [291]*291By other witnesses it was shown that he had the reputation of a drinking man, who very frequently, if not invariably, got drunk when he went to Moberly.

About eight o’clock or a little later of the day in question, and after dark, he got on his brother’s mule and started to find the house of a sister who lived in Moberly, but in another part of town from that where the accident occurred. He shortly found himself in front of Sue Roberts’ house, and stopped to inquire how to find the way to his sister’s; he found the negro woman, Sue Roberts, and a negro man named William Gibson, standing at her gate, and inquired as to where his sister lived; they told him that she lived on the north side, across the railroad; then he asked the woman to give him a piece of bread, and she said she had none; he then asked for some tobacco, which she went into the house to get for him, and before she returned the work train was heard approaching from the east, and was shortly seen passing around the curve and high ground above mentioned. He was asked where he was going, and replied, “I am going over to my sister’s,” and the woman said to him, “Here comes the train; you are going to get hurt.”

There is some discrepancy between, the plaintiff and his own witnesses as to the time he started from Sue’s gate, he claiming that seeing the train he did not wait for the tobacco, but started to ride away immediately, fearing that his mule would become frightened,. The witness Gibson says that plaintiff waited until after the negro woman had given him the tobacco and he had taken a chew of it, and thanked her for it; at all events, after he had discovered the train approaching from the east, he started to ride atvay in an easterly direction, and had gone several steps when the woman told him he could not get out that way; he then stopped and turned his mule around, when he was again warned [292]*292that he had better be in a hurry as the train was coming and he might get hurt, and he started off in a lope to the west, and- after reaching the path above mentioned he and the mule left the wagon road and traveling the path passed upon the railroad track-a short distance in front of the engine. Instead of crossing over the track ' the mule turned and traveled west between the rails until about ten or twenty feet from the bridge above mentioned, where it stopped and the engine struck it. After the accident plaintiff and the mule were found on the west side of the bridge and on the south side of the railroad track, and the train was stopped a short distance west of where the plaintiff was lying on the ground.

The plaintiff claims that he was not carried over the bridge by the engine, but that both he and the mule were knocked from the place where they were standing when struck to the place where they wore afterwards found. -

There is some discrepancy in the testimony as to the rate of speed at which the train was running. The engine was a Mogul freight engine and the engineer in charge says that when he first saw the plaintiff on the track he was running fifteen or sixteen miles an hour, and that by the time he struck the plaintiff he had reduced the speed to eight miles an hour. The plaintiff’s witnesses, who were the negroes living in the houses along the track, and negro tie loaders on the train, put the speed at from thirty-five to forty-five miles per hour, arriving at their conclusions by comparison with the speed of passenger trains along the same track, which they said they understood ran about forty or forty-five miles an hour. The plaintiff rode on the track about twenty-five or thirty feet in front of the / engine. The plaintiff’s witnesses upon this point besides himself were the negro woman, Sue Roberts, and [293]*293the two menWilliam Gibson and Len Burton; the latter was a tie loader who was riding in the engine, on the fireman’s or left hand side. When along about the white telegraph pole, he heard the whistle blow, and then heard some short whistles and looked out and saw a man and a mule on the track, but says that the train was going too fast for him to tell how far distant the man and mule were.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
21 S.W. 742, 115 Mo. 283, 1893 Mo. LEXIS 53, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/prewitt-v-eddy-mo-1893.