Yazoo & M. V. R. R. v. Dees

83 So. 613, 121 Miss. 439
CourtMississippi Supreme Court
DecidedMarch 15, 1920
DocketNo. 20945
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 83 So. 613 (Yazoo & M. V. R. R. v. Dees) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Mississippi Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Yazoo & M. V. R. R. v. Dees, 83 So. 613, 121 Miss. 439 (Mich. 1920).

Opinion

Smith, C. J.,

delivered the opinion of the court

This is an- appeal from a judgment for damages alleged to have been sustained by the appellee while in the employ of the appellant by reason of its negligence.

In September, 1914, and for some years prior thereto, the appellee Avas in the appellant’s employ as an engine foreman in the appellant’s yard at Vicksburg, charged with the duty of “making up all trains . . . that had to be switched in the Vicksburg yards.” There are fifty-two switch tracks in this yard, each controlled by a lever extending from the track to a switch stand about six feet therefrom. On the top of each [462]*462of these stands is an oil lamp. These switch stands, including the lamps on the top thereof, are about three feet high. The lamps which burn oil are inspected each day by an employee of the appellant whose duty it is to keep them filled with oil and burning. Two of the opposite sides of each lamp are of green glass, and two are of red, so that on two sides the light therefrom appears green, and on the other two red, indicating according to the direction in which they are turned whether the switch is open or closed.

The appellee is an expert switchman, was familiar with the appellant’s yard, and knew the location of each swritch therein. On the early morning of September 14, 1917, while it was yet dark, he stepped off of a slowly moving car of an interstate train which his crew was then engaged in switching in order to signal the engineer, and, after taking about two steps, fell over the stand of switch No- 6, the lamp of which was not burning, and was injured. The appellee passed this switch stand a short time before he was injured,' and the lamp thereon was then burning, though this fact seems not to have attracted his attention; the switch having been turned by another member of the crew.

The employee of the appellant in charge of the switch lamps testified that he inspected, filled, and lighted the lamp of switch No. 6 the day before the appellee was injured. One of the members of appellee’s switch crew testified that he examined this lamp immediately after appellee fell over it, and that it had no oil in it. The appellee had a small lighted lantern at the time he was injured, but stated that he was not .using it to locate the switch stand, but was intending to use it in signaling the engineer, and that his failure to see the switch stand was caused by the absence of the light which should have been burning thereon. There was evidence, and the appellee admitted, that these switch [463]*463lamps would occasionally go out without fault on the part of' the appellant or of the person in charge thereof, and that when the going out of a lamp attracted, the attention of a member of the switching crew he would relight it both for his own protection and that of ths appellant.

At the close of the evidence, the presiding judge announced that all of the issues involved in the case could be set forth in not exceeding eight instructions for each side, and that he would not consider a greater number if tendered him. He passed on eight instructions, in addition to a request for a peremptory instruction, tendered him by the appellant, but declined over the appellant’s objection to consider several other instructions tendered him by it, which instructions were afterwards embodied in a bill of exceptions.

The errors assigned bring under review: (1) The refusal of the appellant’s request for a peremptory instruction; (2) the granting of the appellee’s first and second instructions: (3) the refusal of the appellant’s sixth, seventh, and eighth instructions; (4) the refusal of the court below to pass on more than eight instructions tendered by the appellant; and (5) the amount of the verdict.

First. The ground on which the appellant sought to obtain a peremptory instruction is that the going out of the switch light was one of the ordinary risks of the services in which the appellee was engaged, and consequently was assumed by him when he entered the appellant’s employ.

The risks which a servant may incur in any employment fall naturally into one or the other of two classes: First, the ordinary risks of the service, that is, those which are not created by the master’s negligence and which remain after he has used due care to remove them; and, second, the extraordinary risks or those which are created by the master’s negligence.

[464]*464It'is probably a universal rule that the servant merely by entering the service of the master assumes the ordinary risks of the service, and if he is injured solely because of them he cannot recover. But at common law, and under the federal Employers’ Liability Act (U. S. Comp. St. sections 8657-8665), which controls here, risks created by the master’s negligence are not assumed by the servant unless with an actual or constructive knowledge thereof ahd appreciation of the danger therefrom he voluntarily enters or continues in the employment of the master. In the case at bar, the appellee assumed the risk of the switch lamps going out without fault on the part of the appellant; but his complaint here is, and the jury believed, that the lamp of the switch stand over which he fell went out because the appellant’s employee in charge thereof negligently failed to keep it filed with oil, so that the question of whether or not the appellee assumed the risk thereof cannot arise unless he had, before he was injured, either actual or constructive knowledge of the fact that the lamp was out, and whether he had this knowledge, construing the evidence most strongly for the appellant, was a question for the determination of the jury. The request by the appellee for a peremptory instruction was properly ■refused. Seaboard Air Line Railroad v. Horton, 233 U. S., 492, 34 Sup. Ct., 635, 58 L. Ed. 1062, L. R. A. 1915C, 1, Ann. Cas. 1915B, 475.

Second. The appellee’s instruction No. 1 is as follows: “The court instructs the jury for the plaintiff that if you believe from the testimony in this case that the defendant company negligently failed to have the switch light at No. 6 switch lighted on the morning of September 14, 1917, and further believe from the evidence ■that because of such failure on the part' of the defendant to have such switch lamp lighted and as a proximate and direct result thereof plaintiff was injured, unless he knew of this condition, or by the use of [465]*465ordinary diligence could have known of the danger before he. was injured, then you find for the plaintiff and assess his damages in such sum as you believe the evidence justifies, not to exceed the sum sued for.”

The appellant’s objection thereto is that it violates the rule “that the master’s duty in respect to his instrumentalities is restricted to seeing that they are reasonably safe for the performance of the functions for which they are designed,” for the reason that the lights were placed on the switch stand by the appellant, not for the purpose of enabling its employees to locate the switch stands, but for the purpose of indicating whether the switches were open oir closed.

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Bluebook (online)
83 So. 613, 121 Miss. 439, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/yazoo-m-v-r-r-v-dees-miss-1920.