Western & Atlantic Railroad v. Hughes

142 S.E. 185, 37 Ga. App. 771, 1928 Ga. App. LEXIS 606
CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
DecidedFebruary 29, 1928
Docket17951
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 142 S.E. 185 (Western & Atlantic Railroad v. Hughes) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Western & Atlantic Railroad v. Hughes, 142 S.E. 185, 37 Ga. App. 771, 1928 Ga. App. LEXIS 606 (Ga. Ct. App. 1928).

Opinion

Stephens, J.

1. This was a suit against a railroad company, by which an administratrix sought to recover, under the Federal employer’s liability act, damages for the homicide of her husband, which it was alleged was caused by his having been hit by an upright structure of a bridge by the side of the railroad-track and knocked from the running-board on the side of a moving locomotive, upon which he had gone in the discharge of his duties as a traveling fireman in the employ of the railroad company, and where it was alleged that as a result of a rocking from side to side and a swaying of the engine, caused by a low place or depression in first one rail and then the other in the track approaching the bridge he was thrown into the bridge and knocked off the engine, and that the condition of the track was negligence on the part of the railroad company, proximately contributing to the injury. It appears that the deceased was employed in interstate commerce; and while the evidence as to negligence by the defendant was conflicting, there was evidence from which the jury were authorized to infer that upon the approach to the bridge the track contained the depressions as alleged, and that this was negligence on the part of the railroad company, and as a proximate result thereof the engine, as it approached and entered upon the bridge, was caused to rock and sway laterally, and thereby caused the plaintiff’s husband, who was out upon the running-board of the locomotive with the consent of the defendant- and in the discharge of his duties as traveling fireman in the employ of the defendant, to come in contact with an upright on the bridge and be knocked off the engine and killed; and that the pecuniary loss suffered by the plaintiff as the result of her husband’s death was in the amount found in the verdict. The evidence authorized the verdict.

2. Where upon the trial of such a suit the judge instructed the jury that the plaintiff’s husband, who was a servant of the defendant, had, in going upon the running-board of the engine in the discharge of his duty, assumed the risk incident to the existence of the bridge in proximity to the defendant’s track and its passing locomotive, and withdrew from the jury any consideration as to negligence upon the part of the defendant in respect to the maintenance of the bridge, the overruling of the defendant’s demurrers to the petition, objecting to, as insufficient, the allegations of negligence upon the part of the defendant as respects the maintenance of the bridge in close proximity to the track and passing locomotive, was harmless.

3. While the damages recoverable under the Federal employer’s liability act by the plaintiff for the homicide of her husband are compensation solely for the financial and pecuniary loss suffered by her and his minor [772]*772child as a result of the homicide, the services of a pecuniary and financial value which the husband in his lifetime performed for the benefit of the plaintiff and the minor child, such as domestic services around the home, including repairing the house and premises, working the garden, milking the cow, looking after the poultry, and personal Services in waiting upon the plaintiff while she was sick, and personal services to the child, such as assisting him in his lessons, all of a certain alleged value, are items of damages, and tend to illustrate the pecuniary loss suffered by the plaintiff and the minor child. An amendment to the plaintiff’s petition, alleging such services, was good as against the general and special demurrers interposed, and the demurrers were properly overruled. Evidence as to such services was properly admitted; and the court did not err in instructing the jury that in arriving at the pecuniary loss of the wife and child, evidence of such services could be considered. Western & Atlantic R. v. Townsend, 36 Ga. App. 70 (135 S. E. 439).

4. Where in such a suit it appeared from the evidence that the husband, for whose homicide the suit was brought, was .at the time of his death in the employ of the defendant and was in line for promotion as an engineer in its employ, it was not error to admit evidence as to the compensation paid by the defendant to engineers.

5. Where certain evidence as to the installation of guard-rails in the track at the place of the accident a short while after its occurrence, which was offered'by the plaintiff and admitted over the objection of the defendant, was later during the progress of the trial voluntarily withdrawn by the plaintiff without objection from the defendant, and where the court instructed the jury that this evidence was withdrawn from their consideration, the admission of such evidence was harmless, since from its nature it can not be said that, after the jury were instructed to disregard it, it was prejudicial to the defendant. Robinson v. Gray, 22 Ga. App. 25 (95 S. E. 324).

6. There was no error in admitting in evidence photographs of the locality of the homicide, including the bridge and the track and the defendant’s locomotive approaching it, taken some years after the date of the homicide, where the witnesses identified the photographs and testified that they contained true representations of conditions as they existed a few days after the occurrence, and where it was inferable from the evidence that these conditions existed at the time of the occurrence, and where the trial judge specifically instructed the jury (City of Thomasville v. Crowell, 22 Ga. App. 383, 96 S. E. 335; Waller v. Dawson National Bank, 22 Ga. App. 477, 96 S. E. 333; Smith v. State, 23 Ga. App. 76, 97 S. E. 454; Rome Railway & Light Co. v. Spratling, 28 Ga. App. 438, 111 S. E. 702) that the photographs should be considered only for the purpose of throwing light on the conditions at the time of the occurrence complained of.

7. A charge stating a correct principle of law is not error because it fails in the same connection to state another correct principle of law. A charge that if both the decedent and the defendant were negligent, and if the negligence of the defendant in particular was the cause of the death, the negligence of the decedent would not prevent a recovery, but [773]*773would only diminish the amount of damages recoverable, was not error in that the court did not in the same connection ins’truet the jury that there could be no recovery upon the defendant’s negligence if the decedent assumed the risk of the conditions surrounding the accident.

8. Although under the Federal employer’s liability act the amount of damages recoverable, when the negligence of both the decedent and the defendant proximately contributed to the injury, is an amount in the proportion which the defendant’s negligence appears to have been to its negligence and that of the decedent combined, a charge which instructed the jury that the damages recoverable should be diminished in proportion to the amount of negligence attributable to the decedent was not more unfavorable to the defendant than the rule as to the measure of damages applicable under the Federal employer’s liability act; and a refusal to charge, upon request, the rule under the Federal employer’s liability act was not error. Southern Ry. Co. v. Wessinger, 32 Ga. App. 551 (2), 556 (124 S. E. 100).

9.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
142 S.E. 185, 37 Ga. App. 771, 1928 Ga. App. LEXIS 606, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/western-atlantic-railroad-v-hughes-gactapp-1928.