Tomlinson v. Vicksburg
Tomlinson v. Vicksburg
Opinion of the Court
The defendant appeals from a verdict and judgment for $6,500 damages for personal injuries suffered by the plaintiffs’ child. The plaintiffs, answering the appeal, pray that the judgment be increased to $10,000, the amount sued for.
There is no dispute about tbe facts of the case, except as to matters of no importance in our opinion.
The child, only 20 months old, and her brother, 8 years old, returning from the post office to their home, went upon the railway company’s Tight of way to play upon a pile of cross-ties there. The boy dislodged a cross-tie that he stepped upon, and it fell from the pile upon the little girl’s leg and injured her badly.
It was alleged in the plaintiffs’ petition that the cross-ties were stacked “adjacent to and by the side of a street, road or public highway,” and that they were piled so loosely and carelessly that one of them fell upon the child “while she was passing over and along the street, road or public highway.” But the proof is positive and uncontradicted, and it is now conceded, that the cross-ties were not close enough to have fallen into the street or road, and that the offending tie would not have fallen at all if the children had not disturbed it.
The cross-ties did not belong to the railway company. They had been stacked upon the company’s right of way for sale and shipment, but had not been accepted nor even tendered for shipment. We do not, however, consider the ownership of the ties important to a decision of the case, because they had been on the defendant’s premises a long time, some of them as long as two years before the accident; and we assume that the agents of the defendant company knew the cross-ties were on the premises and consented to their being there.
We must bear in mind, with due respect to the parents and their children, that the duty of protecting children from the danger of playing upon a pile of cross-ties belongs more to the occupation of rearing children than to the business of handling cross-ties. We do not mean that there was negligence or failure of duty on the part of the parents in this instance, but merely that there was no negligence or failure of duty on the part of the defendant. The pile of cross-ties was only about 150 feet, and in plain view, from the plaintiffs’ residence. They did not, before the accident, complain of the cross-ties being piled so near to their house or to the street or road; and we have no doubt they would have complained, before the accident, if the danger and temptation to the children had been so obvious to any one that it was negligence for the railway company to fail to observe and guard against the danger.
We are constrained to hold that the verdict and judgment appealed from are not supported by the doctrine of responsibility for maintaining an attractive danger.
The judgment is annulled, and the plaintiffs’ demand is rejected, at their cost.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- TOMLINSON et ux. v. VICKSBURG, S. & P. RY. CO.
- Cited By
- 21 cases
- Status
- Published
- Syllabus
- (Syllabus by Editorial Staff.) 1. Negligence A property owner owes no duty to trespassers except to avoid injuring them willfully, and is not obliged to guard his premises against intrusion. 2. Negligence &wkey;>39 — Attractive Nuisance —Doctrine. The doctrine of responsibility for having on one’s premises an, inviting or attractive danger to children is confined to cases Where the dangerous agency is so obviously tempting to children that the owner is guilty of negligence for failing to observe and guard against the temptation and danger. 3. Negligence A pile of cross-ties on a railroad right of way, near a public street, was not so inviting or attractive a danger and temptation to small children to play about it that it was negligence for the railroad to fail to observe and guard against danger of injury to them.