Homochitto Lumber Co. v. Albritton
Homochitto Lumber Co. v. Albritton
Opinion of the Court
delivered, the opinion of the court.
This is an appeal from a judgment for twenty thousand dollars for personal injuries sustained by the appellee because of the alleged negligence of one of the appellant’s servants. The appellee is a locomotive engineer and was employed by the appellant as engineer of a shay locomotive used by it to move a logging train owned by it, on which it transported logs over its own and the tracks of the Mississippi Central Railroad Company. This train carried two crews, one for the operation of the train which was in charge of the engineer, and another which operated a steam loader by which the logs were loaded into the cars and which was in charge of its own foreman. The train crew included a fireman for the engine, a part of whose duty it was to run the engine when directed so to do by the engineer. The plan adopted by the appellant for transporting its logs to its plant was as stated in the brief of its counsel — “to collect them along its own tracks and along the Mississippi Central Railroad Company’s tracks, and to send the empty train of which the appellee was the engineer, and upon which there was placed a log loader which was operated by a loading crew, to the point at which the logs had been collected. The employee operating the log loader would load one or two cars of logs, when it would become necessary to move the train so as to place the log loader in such position as to enable it to load other logs which were placed alongside those just loaded. In order to have the train so moved, it was necessary to give the appellee who was the engineer a signal by blowing of the whistle of the log loader and upon the blowing of the whistle the appellee would move his train a sufficient distance to place the log loader where the other logs could be by it reached and loaded on empty cars; this method would be followed and the train moved and stopped by signals blown by - the log loader until all the empty cars were loaded, after which the train would be moved, by the shay engine of which the appellee was engineer, to the mill of the appellant and there unloaded.”
There was evidence to the effect that it was customary for the fireman to operate the engine for most of the time AAthile the train was being loaded. The appellee, Avhen injured, was forty-five years old, a skilled locomotive engineer, without training for any other occupation, and was making from twenty-seven to twenty-nine dollars per week.
The principal assignment of error is that the court beIoav should have directed a verdict for the appellant. The grounds of this assignment are: (1) That the appellee was injured because of the negligence of a fellow servant; and (2) that he had “assumed the risk incident to the act of the fireman in starting the locomotive while appellee was engaged in repair work underneath it.” Under the first of these subdivisions the contention of the appellant is that section 193 of the State Constitution does not abolish the
The appellant’s second contention is based on chapter 156, Laws of 1914 (Hemingway’s Code, section 504), which provides that:
“In all actions for personal injury to an employee, and in all actions where such injury results in death, such employee shall not be held to have assumed the risks of his employment in any case where such injury or death results in whole or in part from the negligence of the master; except as to conductors, or locomotive engineers, in charge of dangerous or unsafe cars or engines voluntarily operated by them.”
If the appellee’s injury had occurred while he himself was operating the engine and because of the defect in the brakebeam bolt thereof, of which he had knowledge, the question of the assumption of the risk by him therefrom Wiould be for determination, but the injury did not . so occur. He not only was not running the engine when injured, but had directed the fireman not to put it in motion until ordered by him to do- so, so that his injury was occasioned, not while he was voluntarily operating a defective engine, but because of the fact that it was negligently put in motion by the fireman in disobedience to his order not to move it. The appellee’s injury, therefore, was the result of the negligence of a fellow servant.
The verdict is excessive, but if the appellee will enter a remittitur of five thousand, the judgment will be affirmed for fifteen thousand dollars; otherwise it will be reversed,
Affirmed, with remittitur.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.