Taylor v. Metropolitan Street Railway Co.

165 S.W. 327, 256 Mo. 191, 1914 Mo. LEXIS 408
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedMarch 24, 1914
StatusPublished
Cited by20 cases

This text of 165 S.W. 327 (Taylor v. Metropolitan Street Railway Co.) 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
Taylor v. Metropolitan Street Railway Co., 165 S.W. 327, 256 Mo. 191, 1914 Mo. LEXIS 408 (Mo. 1914).

Opinion

WILLIAMS, C.

— This is a suit to recover damages for personal injuries received by one Albert P. Taylor in a collision with one of defendant’s cars while said Taylor was crossing Nineteenth street on Cherry street in Kansas City, Missouri, about eight [200]*200p. m., September 20, 1907. Plaintiff recovered judgment in the trial court in the sum of $6250, and the defendant perfected an appeal to the Kansas City Court of Appeals. After the appeal was taken, plaintiff died. The case was revived in the name of Jennie Taylor, as administratrix of his estate. • In an opinion written by the Kansas City Court of Appeals the judgment was affirmed, but one of the judges of said Court of Appeals deeming its decision contrary to previous decisions of the Supreme Court, the cause was duly certified and transferred here.

That portion of the plaintiff’s petition charging negligence is as follows:

“Defendant, through the negligence and unskilfulness of its officers, agents, servants and employees in running, conducting and managing a car of the defendant, which was being moved by the defendant at an unusual and rapid rate of speed along said track while in charge of its said officers, agents, servants and employees, negligently and carelessly ran the said car into, upon and against the wagon in which plaintiff was riding, as aforesaid, with great force and violence.
‘ ‘ That the officer's, agents, servants, and employees of the defendant in charge of said car, and who were then engaged in running, conducting and managing said car, saw, or by the exercise of ordinary care on their part might have seen, said plaintiff and become aware of the danger to which he was exposed while crossing said Nineteenth street, and while said wagon was on said track, crossing the same, in ample time to have stopped said car before it struck said wagon, as aforesaid, and thus have avoided injuring plaintiff, but that said officers, agents, servants, and employees of said defendant so in charge of said car, negligently failed to stop said car and negligently caused and permitted the same to strike said wagon as aforesaid, whereby plaintiff was violently knocked down [201]*201and against said wagon and gig and ont of said wagon to the street,” etc.

The answer was a general denial.

The evidence tended to establish the following facts: Plaintiff, thirty-three years of age, in good health, at about 8 p. m., September 20, 1907, together with four companions came out of a restaurant on the southeast corner of Nineteenth and Cherry streets in Kansas City, Missouri, and got into a farm wagon which had been left standing on Cherry street a few feet south of Nineteenth street,, and started to drive north on the east side of Cherry street across said Nineteenth street, intending to go to a certain freight depot where they were expecting to receive a shipment of race horses. The wagon was an ordinary farm wagon with its bed and sideboards, twenty-six inches deep. On the front part of the wagon bed was a spring seat, upon which were seated Ollie King, the driver of the team, and George Wilson. Jim Allen was standing up in the wagon bed, just bach of the spring seat. Back of Allen a driving cart was resting with its axle across the top of the wagon bed and one half of its wheels extended above the wagon bed. Back of the driving cart a man by the name of Jagjard, the owner of the team and wagon, was seated or standing and just back of Jaggard, and near the rear end of the wagon bed, plaintiff was standing.

On the southwest comer of this crossing a two-story building stood flush with the sidewalk, and on the same corner, between the curb and sidewalk, was a gas light. There was also a gas light on the northeast corner of this crossing. Nineteenth street, at this place, was forty-nine and one half feet wide from property line to property line, thirty-four feet wide from curb to curb, and was fourteen feet from the south curb to the south rail of defendant’s track. About one hundred and eighty-eight feet west of the Cherry street crossing an alley crossed Nineteenth [202]*202street. Nineteenth street at this alley was one foot, three and one-half inches higher than at the Cherry street crossing, but Nineteenth street was practically level for at least a distance of four blocks west of Cherry street. Defendant’s cars on Nineteenth street always ran eastward.

Plaintiff testified that as the wagon started across Nineteenth street he looked first to the east bnt his view was obstructed by the building on the southeast comer of the crossing. He then turned and looked toward the west and saw the car coining from the west which looked to be sixty or seventy-five yards away; that at this time the horses were on the track between the two rails; that it was about seventeen feet to the horses’ heads from where he was standing in the back end of the wagon; that after looking at the car he thought the wagon had plenty of time to get across ahead of it; that the car did not slacken its speed before it hit the wagon; that the car was running twenty-five or thirty miles an hour; that the team was traveling about six miles an hour; that he was standing between the shafts and the two wheels of the cart and did not know whether he had plenty of time to get out of the wagon or not but that he did not think it was necessary to jump out and did not make any effort to get out; that after looking at the car he turned toward Mr. Jaggard and was talking to him and again looked around in the direction of the car and the light of the car was right onto the wagon, and the collision immediately occurred, the car striking the wagon near one of the rear wheels; that just before the car struck the wagon, Mr. Jaggard halloed to the driver, “Look out there” and that the driver hit the horses with the whip causing them to jump in order to clear the track. Plaintiff was knocked unconscious by the collision and did not regain consciousness until some time later in the City Hospital. Plaintiff remained in the City Hospital six days and was then removed to the Bethany [203]*203Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas, where he remained about twenty days.

Plaintiff’s evidence tended to show that before the accident he was a strong, healthy man; that from the accident he received a cut on the back of the head and over his eye which had to be sewed up by a surgeon. For several days after being taken to the hospital he was unconscious and incoherent in his speech and was suffering from concussion of the brain and partial paralysis of his right arm, right leg and right side. Other injuries which were were unimportant are also mentioned. Evidence also tended to show that plaintiff was permanently injured; that the muscles of his right limb were atrophied and that the power and motion of his right side and right limbs were impaired about one-half. That it was nine months after the injury before plaintiff did any work and from that time on worked about one-half the time doing light work such as driving livery teams, hitching, unhitching and currying horses and worked some in St. Louis driving a team to an asphalt wagon.

The evidence on the part of plaintiff showed that a car of this kind, going fifteen miles an hour, could be stopped within a distance of fifty or sixty feet taking into consideration the safety of the passengers^. Defendant’s evidence in this regard tended to show that it would take one hundred feet in which to stop the car.

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Bluebook (online)
165 S.W. 327, 256 Mo. 191, 1914 Mo. LEXIS 408, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/taylor-v-metropolitan-street-railway-co-mo-1914.