Tennessee Central Railway Co. v. Williams

9 Tenn. App. 529, 1929 Tenn. App. LEXIS 109
CourtCourt of Appeals of Tennessee
DecidedFebruary 8, 1929
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 9 Tenn. App. 529 (Tennessee Central Railway Co. v. Williams) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Tennessee primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Tennessee Central Railway Co. v. Williams, 9 Tenn. App. 529, 1929 Tenn. App. LEXIS 109 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1929).

Opinion

FAW, P. J.

This case was tried twice in the circuit court of Wilson county. On the first trial the jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff below, Fate Williams, and assessed his damages at $5000. This verdict was, on motion for a new trial, set aside by the trial judge on the ground that the evidence preponderated against the verdict, and a new trial was granted. On the second trial, the jury again found the issues in favor of plaintiff Williams and fixed his damages at $3000. The trial judge overruled a motion for a new trial by defendant Railway Company and pronounced judgment on the verdict for $3000 and costs, whereupon the Railway Company appealed in error to this court and has assigned errors here.

Although the Railway Company is plaintiff in error, we will, for convenience, refer to Fate Williams as plaintiff and to the Railway Company as defendant.

The plaintiff was injured on January 4, 1927, while working, as an employee of defendant, at a rock quarry operated by defendant adjacent to defendant’s railway track about three and one-half miles east of Watertown in Wilson county. Plaintiff instituted this action on March 16, 1927, and thereafter filed his declaration, in one count, which was later amended by the insertion of .additional averments at designated places therein.

Omitting formal introductory statement and averments of the corporate character and business of defendant, the declaration (including the amendments) is as follows:

“Whereas, heretofore, on the - day of - 1927, the defendant . . . while engaged in taking rock from a quarry some distance removed from its main track, having engaged the plaintiff, by contract, to assist in said operation, and while removing the rock for its purpose by means of conveying it along a line of improvised tracks over which ears containing the rocks were pushed, it being the duty of the servants so employed to push said cars, and the plaintiff being so engaged by the defendant, and being so directed, while pursuing the directions of said defendant Company, because of the negligent construction of said track (and) because of the condition of repair to which it had been allowed: to become by the negligence of defendant, it having been allov^ed to sag suddenly in certain divers and many places along its line and to become so insecure and loose as to spread at certain points and to contract and catch and hold and bind the flange *531 of the car wheels at other points, so that when the heavy car would meet the sags in the track it would jostle and give a sudden jump and then run backward with force and violence, to suddenly catch and lock the wheels of the car on the track, and when, on the day aforesaid, while the plaintiff was engaged in pushing one of said cars at its rear, the car suddenly running . into one of the sags on the neglected track, and running into one of the contracted points of the track, the track suddenly binding the flange of the vdieels and suddenly stopped the car, the car violently gave a jerk, loosening the grasp of the plaintiff and causing him to fall upon the hard surface of the ties and ballast and rails of said track, resulting in serious and permanent injury to his body, especially to his back, causing him to suffer great pain and mental anguish and the expense of doctor’s bills and the loss of time.
“The injury so received by the plaintiff was directly due to the negligence of the defendant in placing plaintiff and his fellow-workers in a position that was rendered quite perilous, because the defendant, through its carelessness and neglect, had allowed the track over which the car was to be pushed to become warpedi and unsteady, and to sag, and to contract and expand, binding the flanges of the wheels, making the course of the pushed car unsteady, and causing it, at the point of the accident, to jump from under the plaintiff and thus throw him on the hard surface beneath, to his injury aforesaid, for which he sues and asks for a jury to try his cause.”

A brief prefatory statement of certain facts disclosed by the evidence will conduce to a better understanding of the questions presented by defendant’s assignments of error.

Plaintiff was employed as a “loader” at defendant’s rock quarry. The rock was quarried from the face of a bluff near the railroad track. A crusher was located immediately alongside the main track of the defendant. The rock "was blasted out of the bluff and then broken up with sledge hammers. When thus reduced, it was loaded on tram cars and conveyed to the crusher. Two steel tram cars, of the latest improved type, each weighing approximately eighteen hundred pounds when empty, "were used for this purpose. Each of these ears had a carrying capacity of about one ton of rock. The wheels of these cars were constructed after the pattern of an ordinary railroad-car wheel, with a face about two and one-half inches in width, and flanges on the inside to hold the car on the track. The gauge of the track allowed about one-fourth of an inch of “play” for the flanges. The track was made of 25-pound steel rails (lighter than the rails ordinarily used on steam railroads) laid on standard cross ties.

*532 Defendant had been operating this qnarry for more than a year at the time plaintiff was injured, and the track had been extended from time to time farther from the crusher as the rock was removed from the qnarry, and the track was somewhere from three hundred to four hundred and fifty feet in length — the estimates of the witnesses varying on this subject. For a distance of' approximately one-half the length of the track, beginning at the crusher, the track was fairly well ballasted with stone, but the remainder of the track had very little ballast between the ties and, according to plaintiff’s proof, the distance between ties varied from one and one-half to eight feet, and the ties were “pillared up,” or supported, by “sprawl rock.” Near the quarry the track was frequently moved, and it was customary to remove the rails for a distance of about ninety feet from the face of the quarry before each blast, or “shot” to avoid injury to the rails.

A “crew” of eighteen or twenty men were employed by defendant as laborers at the quarry, and five of these men worked as “loaders.” The cars when loaded, rolled by the force of gravity down a slight grade (one and one-half percent) from the quarry to the crusher where they were unloaded by machinery. Two of the loaders rode on each car as it rolled down to the crusher and, after it was unloaded, they pushed it back to the quarry — walking behind the car on the ties and rails with their hands against the body or on the top of the car, Avhich was about four and one-half feet above the surface of the track.

It was not a part of the work of the loaders to build, move or repair the track. This was done by other employees. However, all of the laborers at the quarry was under the direct supervision of the same foreman employed by defendant.

About the middle of the afternoon of January 4, 1927, while plaintiff and another loader (P. G. Grandstaff) were pushing an empty tram car from the crusher to the quarry in the manner before described, plaintiff fell'on the track and, as a result of said fall, suffered personal injuries which, according to the testimony of plaintiff and his witnesses, were of a serious and painful nature and permanently impaired his earning capacity.

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Related

Wilson v. Nashville, C. & St. L. Ry
65 S.W.2d 637 (Court of Appeals of Tennessee, 1933)
Draper v. Louisville N.R. Co.
66 S.W.2d 1003 (Court of Appeals of Tennessee, 1933)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
9 Tenn. App. 529, 1929 Tenn. App. LEXIS 109, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/tennessee-central-railway-co-v-williams-tennctapp-1929.