Vicksburg, S. & P. Ry. Co. v. Jackson

133 S.W. 925, 1911 Tex. App. LEXIS 1336
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJanuary 7, 1911
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 133 S.W. 925 (Vicksburg, S. & P. Ry. Co. v. Jackson) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Vicksburg, S. & P. Ry. Co. v. Jackson, 133 S.W. 925, 1911 Tex. App. LEXIS 1336 (Tex. Ct. App. 1911).

Opinion

TALBOT, j.

Appellee, Jackson, instituted this suit in the district court of Dallas county, Tex., to recover damages in the sum of $1,999 for personal injuries received by his wife through the negligence of appellant’s employes, while assisting her to board one of appellant’s passenger trains at Raysville, La., on March 29, 1909. The petition alleged, in substance, and the evidence was sufficient to show, the following state of facts: On the 29th day of March, 1908, the plaintiff and his wife, Mrs. Emma Jackson, were at Natchez, Miss., where they took passage by rail for Dallas, Tex. They each held through tickets from the said city of Natchez to the said city of Dallas. From the town of Rays-ville, La., to the city of Shreveport, La., their., tickets were for transportation over the railroad of the defendant. When plaintiff and his wife reached Raysville, they went to defendant’s depot there, and, when its train arrived en route to Shreveport, they undertook to get aboard said train, as in[926]*926structed. by defendant’s servants in charge thereof. There was no platform at the place whfere plaintiff and his wife boarded the train; a footstool about 12 inches high being used, upon which passengers were directed to step in getting on the train. When Mrs. Jackson stepped upon the footstool to board the train, one of defendant’s servants, a brakeman, took hold of her arm to assist her upon said train. Said brakeman held to Mrs. Jackson’s arm .until she had placed her foot upon the bottom step of the car-; but, before she was able to raise herself up and get safely balanced upon the step, the brakeman' released his hold of her arm, which caused her to fall backwards, and as she so fell the brakeman caught her with both hands in the small of the back, and, by reason of the force of the fall and the catching of her by defendant’s servant in the manner in which it was done, she was painfully and seriously injured, substantially in all or some of the ways alleged in plaintiff’s petition. The brakeman, in releasing his hold of Mrs. Jackson’s arm and catching her in the back, was guilty of negligence which proximately resulted in the injuries which she sustained. In 1905 or 1906, Mrs. Jackson suffered a miscarriage caused by a blow in her left side from a piece of machinery with which she was working in a cotton mill. Subsequently, in April, 1907, or a little less than a year prior to the alleged injury made the basis of this suit, she was affected with an enlargement and flooding of the womb, and because of which an operation was performed upon her womb; but at the time of the accident in question she had recovered and was a strong and healthy young woman. The defendant pleaded a general demurrer and a general denial. A jury trial resulted in a verdict and judgment in favor of the plaintiff for the sum of $250, and the defendant appealed.

The first assignment of error complains of the court’s refusal to give a special charge requested by the defendant directing the jury to return a verdict in its favor.' The proposition under this assignment is: “The testimony, including the reasonable inferences therefrom, is insufficient to show an act of the defendant of which the injuries of the plaintiff’s wife were the natural and probable consequences, which ought to have been foreseen by the defendant’s agent in the light of the attending circumstances.” We do not concur in this view of the testimony. Having undertaken to assist Mrs. -Jackson to board the train, it became the duty of appellant’s servant, who attempted to perform this service, to exercise toward her that high degree of care that would have been exercised by a very competent, cautious, and prudent person under the same circumstances; and if the testimony did not indisputably show that Mrs. Jackson’s injuries were the natural and probable consequences of the alleged negligent acts of appellant’s servant, which ought to have been foreseen by him, it was sufficient to justify a finding that such or similar injuries might reasonably have been anticipated as a probable result of said acts. The court would not have been warranted in telling the jury, as a matter of law arising upon the facts, that the injury sustained by appellee’s wife, or no similar injury, could have been foreseen as the natural and probable consequences of appellant’s negligence. The peremptory charge was therefore properly refused.

Appellant’s second assignment of error complains of the court’s refusal to give the following charge requested by it, namely: “You are charged that before the plaintiff can recover for any injuries resulting to his wife from the negligent acts of this defendant, if you find that there was negligence, you must find and believe from a preponderance of the evidence that such injuries resulted proximately as the natural and probable consequences, reasonably to be foreseen as the probable result of such acts of the defendant’s agent, and the plaintiff cannot recover for the possible result thereof.” V/e are of the opinion there was no error in this ruling of the court. If it should be conceded, which is not done, that the evidence called for an instruction upon the subject of this charge, the’same was erroneous, in that it required the jury to find, in order to return a verdict in favor of the plaintiff, that the exact injury or injuries received by appellee’s wife must have been foreseen as the probable result of the negligent acts of the appellant’s servant. The test is whether a reasonably prudent man, in view of all the facts, would have anticipated, -not necessarily the precise actual injury, but some like injury. Railway Co. v. Bigham, 90 Tex. 223, 38 S. W. 162; Railway Co. v. Barrett, 46 Tex. Civ. App. 14, 101 S. W. 1025; Bering Mfg. Co. v. Peterson, 28 Tex. Civ. App. 194, 67 S. W. 133. In Bering Mfg. Co. v. Peterson, supra, after announcing the rule substantially as above stated, it was held that, had the court instructed the jury that the exact injury complained of must have been foreseen as a probable result of the negligence charged, as requested, such instruction would have been error.

It is said in the brief “that it was clearly the duty of the court to give the requested charge or some other of an equivalent nature.” To this contention the answer is that, the trial court having charged the jury generally to the effect that before they could find for the plaintiff they must find that the negligence of the appellant’s servant was the proximate result of the injuries suffered by appellee’s wife, it was not the duty of the court to correct the inaccurate requested charge, and reduce it to proper form, or to prepare altogether himself a correct one upon the subject, and give it in charge to the jury, although the imperfect requested charge may have been sufficient to direct the attention of the court to the question involved. [927]*927Railway Co. v. Minter, 42 Tex. Civ. App. 235, 93 S. W. 516.

It is also assigned that the court erred in refusing the following special charge, requested by the appellant: “If you find from the evidence that defendant’s flagman let go Mrs. Jackson’s arm, and that, in so doing, was guilty of negligence, as that term is defined in the charge, you will find for the defendant, unless you further find that said flagman should have foreseen, in the light of attending circumstances, that Mrs. Jackson would probably receive injuries if he let go her arm when he did, if you find that he let go her arm.” There was no error in refusing-this charge.

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Bluebook (online)
133 S.W. 925, 1911 Tex. App. LEXIS 1336, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/vicksburg-s-p-ry-co-v-jackson-texapp-1911.