Home/Missouri Court of Appeals/Stookey Ex Rel. Stookey v. St. Louis-San Francisco Railway Co.

Stookey Ex Rel. Stookey v. St. Louis-San Francisco Railway Co.

236 S.W. 426, 209 Mo. App. 33, 1922 Mo. App. LEXIS 100
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedJanuary 14, 1922
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 236 S.W. 426 (Stookey Ex Rel. Stookey v. St. Louis-San Francisco 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
Stookey Ex Rel. Stookey v. St. Louis-San Francisco Railway Co., 236 S.W. 426, 209 Mo. App. 33, 1922 Mo. App. LEXIS 100 (Mo. Ct. App. 1922).

Opinion

FARRINGTON, J.

The plaintiff, a boy 15 years old, obtained a judgment through his next friend, his mother, against the defendant on account of the death of his father which occurred in Pulaski county, Missouri, about five o’clock in the afternoon on August 20, 1919, at a railroad crossing which was maintained by the defendant. The defendant appeals assigning errors, first, that the court erred in refusing an instruction, offered by the defendant, in the nature of a demurrer to the evidence; and the other assignments go to the giving of plaintiff’s instructions and a refusal of some of defendant’s instructions offered.

The first proposition that requires our attention is the demurrer to the evidence, and this requires a statement of the case as made. On the - morning of August 20, 1919, the father of plaintiff went to the town of Richland, Missouri, in' a Ford touring car, taking with him his wife and his son, the plaintiff here. The road they traveled to Richland required that they cross defendant’s railroad right-of-way, and it appears that a road and railroad crossing had been maintained for years by the defendant but that some time prior *44 to this accident the defendant had placed gates on either side of the crossing, the authority or reason for doing so is not shown by the record. At any rate, the defendant did maintain gates and a crossing over the actual track by putting chats between the ties over the crossing, making the ground between the ties level and placing the usual boards on each side of the rail for the approaches over the rails. Some few weeks before August 20th, which was the date on which plaintiff’s father was caught in a collision at this crossing, the defendant had tom out the boards on either side of the rails and had raised the track several inches. The evidence offered by the plaintiff clearly shows that some of the boards, especially on the north or west side, had not been placed back, which, of course, made the crossing hard to get over and the track having been raised there was not sufficient chat to bring the ground between the ties, after it had been raised up, to a level with them between the rails. Without going into detail, we may close this branch of the case by saying there is sufficient evidence here upon which it could well be found that the defendant company had failed in its duty to maintain the crossing in proper condition as is required by the statute.

*38

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Wallace v. Woods
102 S.W.2d 91 (Supreme Court of Missouri, 1937)
Stookey Ex Rel. Stookey v. St. Louis-San Francisco Railway Co.
249 S.W. 141 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1923)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
236 S.W. 426, 209 Mo. App. 33, 1922 Mo. App. LEXIS 100, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/stookey-ex-rel-stookey-v-st-louis-san-francisco-railway-co-moctapp-1922.