Winfrey v. Missouri, K. & T. Ry. Co.

194 F. 808, 114 C.C.A. 218, 1912 U.S. App. LEXIS 1219
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
DecidedMarch 4, 1912
DocketNo. 3,482
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 194 F. 808 (Winfrey v. Missouri, K. & T. Ry. Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Winfrey v. Missouri, K. & T. Ry. Co., 194 F. 808, 114 C.C.A. 218, 1912 U.S. App. LEXIS 1219 (8th Cir. 1912).

Opinion

ADAMS, Circuit Judge

(after stating the facts as above). The main theory of plaintiff’s case as disclosed by the pleadings was that [811]*811defendant’s agents in charge of the north-bound train knew of Winfrey’s intoxicated and incapacitated condition, and did not exercise that degree of care required of them to remove him, or see that,he was safely removed from the train, at his destination at Blue Jacket; and as a result that the train started while he was in a perilous position, and so known by defendant’s agents, and caused him to fall or be precipitated upon the track, and that he was so injured by the fall or so paralyzed by his intoxication that he could not escape before the south-bound train overran him.

Another theory disclosed by the pleadings was that defendant’s agents in charge of the south-bound train were guilty of actionable negligence, in that they so failed to keep a proper lookout, and so negligently operated their train as to occasion the injury and death of Winfrey.

The court charged the jury among other things as follows:

“If you find from the evidence that the deceased, William Winfrey, did not remain upon the train until after it started to leave the station of Blue Jacket, but left the train at Blue Jacket with the other passengers leaving the train at that point, and, instead of falling from the train, came upon the track in some other way, then your verdict should be for the defendant. * *„ * If the servants of the company' whose duty' it is to receive passengers on the trains accept one as a passenger who from drunkenness is unable to care for and look after himself, when such condition is known to them, then the railroad company owes him the duty to exercise with regard to such passenger such care as may be reasonably necessary for his safely, * * * [and] must bestow upon him any special care and attention beyond that given to the ordinary passenger, which reasonable prudence and care demand for his safety. * * * If its servants in charge of the passengers on such train, knowing the facts, fail to give such care and attention, and injury results as an immediate consequence of such failure, then the company is guilty of negligence. * * * If an intoxicated person * * * negligently places himself in a dangerous position, and his danger, by reason thereof, is known to the servants of the defendant in charge of the train, whose duty it is to take care of passengers, it then becomes their duty, notwithstanding his intoxication and its having caused him to become in a dangerous position, to use reasonable and ordinary care — that is, such care as a reasonably prudent person would use -under the circumstances — to prevent injuring him. If his dangerous position is discovered, the fact that his negligence has placed him there would not warrant the defendant in not exercising with regard to him that care which it would exercise with regard to any other person, whom it was aware was in a similarly dangerous position. * * * As one of the defenses to this action, the defendant pleads contributory negligence. The plaintiff in this case cannot recover if the want of care or caution on the part of the deceased contributed proximately to his injury; but in such case the deceased would be guilty of what the law terms contributory negligence. * * * If from a preponderance of all the evidence offered by both the plaintiff and the defendant you find that the injury resulted in any degree from the plaintiff’s contributory negligence, then your verdict should be for the defendant. * * * In considering the question of contributory negligence of the deceased, I charge you that a man cannot voluntarily place himself in a condition whereby he loses such control of his brain or muscle as a man of ordinary prudence and caution in the full possession of his faculties would exercise, and thereby contribute ■fo an injury to himself, and then require of one ignorant of his condition recompense therefor. The law of contributory negligence imposes upon one who has .voluntarily disabled himself by reason of intoxication the same degree of care and prudences which is required of a sober person. If the voluntary intoxication of 'a person leads him to place himself in an exposed position, or prevents the full use of his faculties, so that injury results there[812]*812from, and but for such intoxication tbe injury would not hare resulted, then such injured person is guilty of contributory negligence. The mere fact, however, that a person at the time he may receive an injury is intoxicated is not of itself evidence of contributory negligence, but is a circumstance to be considered, and it is for the jury to determine whether it in. fact contributed to his injury.”

Counsel for plaintiff took exceptions to the charge in these words:

“I * * * except to * * * that portion of your honor’s charge withdrawing from the jury the question of the negligence of the defendant in the event it should be ascertained that the deceased got off the train at Blue Jacket.”
“I desire * * * to except to that portion of your honor’s charge upon the subject of. contributory negligence, which instructs the jury that, if the injury resulted in any negree from the deceased’s contributory negligence, this should be considered by the jury as cutting the plaintiff off from a right of recovery.
“I desire to except specially to that portion of your honor’s charge upon the proposition of the plaintiff’s voluntarily putting himself in the condition of intoxication, * * * [and of his] voluntarily placing himself in a position of danger, * * * as not being warranted * * * by the evidence.”
I “desire also to except to that portion of your honor’s charge which, by itself and uncoupled with the part which came later, told the jury that the same degree of care and prudence is required of a drunken man as of a sober man, for the reason that the same ignores the * * * helpless condition of a drunken man.”
“I also desire your honor to instruct the jury that drunkenness itself is not contributory negligence, * =? * [and] that drunkenness itself is not sufficient evidence of contributory negligence.”

[1] We think there was no error in holding as a matter of law that if the deceased did not remain upon the train after it started to leave the station at Blue Jacket, but left it as other passengers did at that place, plaintiff could not recover. If those were the facts, the first and main specification of negligence could not have been the proximate cause of Winfrey being run over and killed by the southbound train. These being the facts, his death was not the natural and probable consequence of the alleged negligence of the agents in charge of the north-bound train,' but some other and intermediate efficient cause must have produced it (Milwaukee, etc., Ry. Co. v. Kellogg, 94 U. S. 469, 24 L. Ed. 256), and, as there was no evidence that the usual or statutory signals were not given or the proper outlook maintained as the south-bound train approached the station, the instruction was clearly right on any phase of the cáse.

[2] The next assignment of error is founded on the exception to the charge that, if the injury resulted in any degree from the 'deceased’s contributory negligence, plaintiff could not recover.

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

Related

Lynch v. Clark
194 P.2d 416 (Oregon Supreme Court, 1948)
Fair v. Floyd
75 F.2d 920 (Third Circuit, 1935)
Lynn v. Stinnette
31 P.2d 764 (Oregon Supreme Court, 1934)
Szpyrka v. International Railway Co.
213 A.D. 390 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1925)
Dickson v. Chattanooga Ry. & Light Co.
237 F. 352 (Sixth Circuit, 1916)
Midland Valley R. Co. v. Littlejohn
1914 OK 388 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1914)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
194 F. 808, 114 C.C.A. 218, 1912 U.S. App. LEXIS 1219, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/winfrey-v-missouri-k-t-ry-co-ca8-1912.