Marriott v. Missouri Pacific Railway Co.
Marriott v. Missouri Pacific Railway Co.
Opinion of the Court
Plaintiff and her husband were passengers on one of defendant’s trains. This train collided with a train of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railway Company, whereby plaintiff’s husband was injured and from which injury, as she claims, he ■afterwards died. She instituted this action as his widow, for damages, and recovered judgment for seven thousand dollars in the trial court.
The collision occurred on the 18th of September, 1907, and is the samé in which plaintiff herself was injured and whose case against this defendant was decided by us at this term of court. We there decided that there was substantial evidence tending to show negligence of,defendant and that therefore the trial court properly refused a demurrer asked by defendant. We likewise examined objections to instructions given for plaintiff in that case and concluded such objections were not good. What we there said on the subject of the sufficiency of the evidence and the correctness of plaintiff’s instructions, applies to and determines those, matters in this case, since they are identical; and we refer to that case for the ground of our ruling these points against defendant in this case. And so we likewise refer to that case for a statement of the facts upon which the action is founded.
But an objection to the judgment arises in this case which could not have been made to the other and which calls for additional consideration. Defendant claims that deceased’s death was not shown to be the result of the collision and that the finding of the jury that it was, was mere conjecture. As has been stated, the collision occurred on the 18th of September, at St. Joseph, Missouri. The deceased died in Utah on the
But as against this showing for plaintiff was that of defendant, consisting in part of the opinion of phy
In such state of evidence Ne do not feel that we would be justified in declaring that no more appears than conjecture, or possibility of the death being the proximate result from the collision and that the.jury had no proper basis for the verdict. [Sharp v. Ry. Co., 213 Mo. 517; MacDonald v. Ry. Co., 219 Mo. 468; Sorenson v. Ry. Co., 36 Fed. Rep. 166.]
In the Sharp case the family physician of the deceased testified that his “injuries had not a whit to do with his death; that his hurts from the fall were merely muscular, calculated to lame his back temporarily:” but the Supreme Court affirmed the verdict in favor of plaintiff, and said that: “If a man, well today, is badly injured, and from that time on sickens (with symptoms referable to his injury) and, languishing, finally dies, a disagreement among doctors as to the name of the disease on him at the moment of dissolution does not create a condition from which it can be said that a verdict one way or the other is merely guesswork . . . For, if there had been no physicians testifying as experts and the jury had been without medical advice, yet plaintiff’s lay evidence showed a cause for Sharp’s pain and suffering and his visible approach to the grave in the steps he took, commencing at the place and time of his injury and ending there, are rational deductions within the right of a jury in applying common sense to facts. The expert medical testimony was merely advisory, and, because the advice given to the jury by the opinions of the doctors differed, that presents no case for our interference.”
In the MacDonald case the court said: “It must be borne in mind, too, that doctors’ theories under oath
In the Sorenson case, it was said that: “Where medical witnesses disagree in opinion and theory, the undisputed history of the case is often the most satisfactory and controlling fact. In this case, such history fully justified the verdict. . . . Soon after this accident he began to droop and fail, and so continued failing, with a short and slight change for the better in the spring of 1884, until his death in September, 1884. Such a fact is significant, and upholds
Those cases are especially applicable to this controversy as it has been argued orally and in writing by the respective counsel. We had occasion to say in another case that it is not necessary, in order to uphold a verdict, that the case should exclude possibilities; reasonable probability is all that is required. In Fetter v. Fidelity and Casualty Co., 174 Mo. 256, Judge Valliant says: “The genius of our law does not claim for it infallibility; it recognizes that there is an element of uncertainty that enters into every forensic contest, which human wisdom cannot always make certain, and its aim is to come as close to the right as the means at hand will permit. Under our system of jurisprudence the jury is the tribunal to which questions of this kind are submitted for determination, and with all their human liability to err we have never yet discovered any better tribunal for the trial of questions of fact even where highly scientific propositions are involved. Science itself appeals to common sense for its recognition.”
A careful examination of the entire record, including suggestions of counsel not herein specially mentioned, has failed to disclose to us ány proper ground for interference with the judgment, and it is accordingly affirmed. •
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.