Jonesboro, Lake City & Eastern Railroad v. Minson

Wood, J., (after stating the facts). 1. The appellant requested the court to direct the jury to return a verdict in its favor, which the court refused. The appellant duly excepted to the ruling of the court, and urges here that the court erred in not granting its prayer, contending that the undisputed evidence shows that there was no negligence on the part of the appellant which was the proximate cause of the injury to Minson, and also that the undisputed evidence shows that Minson’s own negligence was the cause of his injury; and also that the undisputed evidence shows that Minson assumed the risk. It could serve no useful purpose to discuss in detail the evidence upon which appellant bases its contention. We have set forth somewhat at length in the statement the facts which the testimony tends to prove, and our conclusion is that the questions both of negligence and contributory negligence, under the evidence, were for the jury; also the question as to whether or not Minson had assumed the risk. These questions were all submitted to the jury upon instructions to which no objections have been urged here, and, while the defenses of assumed risk and contributory negligence were not set up in the answer, they were, without objection on the part of the appellee, developed in the progress of the trial, and were treated by the court in its instructions as issues in the cause. It is therefore proper to consider them here, which we have done. 2. In our opinion, the only testimony which would warrant a finding of negligence on the part of the appellant is that tending to prove that appellant had failed to keep its trestle in a safe condition. That testimony which tended to show that appellant had permitted its ties to become rotten so that the same would give way and cause a brakeman, while passing over or stepping upon it in the discharge of his duty, to fall and thus to receive the injury for which damages are sought, is the only testimony upon which the liability of appellant could be predicated. The manner in which appellant constructed this trestle originally had nothing whatever to do with the injury to Min-son. The manner of construction was in no sense the proximate cause of the injury to the brakeman. The negligence, if any, consisted, not in an improper construction of the trestle in the first place, but in the manner in which it was maintained, and in the unsafe condition in which the evidence tended to show appellant had negligently permitted it to become by failing to keep it in proper repair. If appellant was liable at all, it was because, through its negligence, it had failed to replace the rotten ties with sound ones before it became necessary for Minson to pass over the same in the work of coupling th e cars. Therefore, the testimony as to the custom of other roads in the manner of building such trestles as the one under consideration was wholly irrelevant and incompetent. It' introduced an issue of negligence that was foreign to any allegation of negligence that was made in the appellee’s complaint. The testimony was highly prejudicial, because it was calculated to cause the jury to conclude that if appellant had not constructed its trestle in the first place in the customary manner of other railroad companies it was negligent and should be held liable for that reason, whereas it is not shown that the original construction of the trestle was in any manner the cause of the injury to Minson. In this view of the ease it is wholly unnecessary for us to determine whether or not the testimony would be admissible in any event, and we pretermit that question. For the error indicated the judgment is reversed, and the cause is remanded for a new trial.