Calcerrada v. American Railroad Co.
Calcerrada v. American Railroad Co.
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the conrt.
The outside facts in this case are about as follows: On reaching Areeibo a branch line of the American Railroad Company runs along Tanama Street and the tracks lie in front of the railroad station in said city. There are three or four places around the railroad station whereat trucks may be placed and loaded or unloaded. All hut one of them
To the complaint for damages proceeding from an alleged negligence the defendant, the American Railroad Company, demurred. The demurrer was overruled. Two trials have since taken place wherein the contributory negligence of the plaintiff has been made an issue and, as the determination of this defense definitely disposes of the obligation existing between the parties, we shall consider it first.
The District Court of Areeibo on the 27th of May, 1923, granted a motion of nonsuit, principally if not exclusively, because of the contributory negligence of the plaintiff. The judgment so rendered was reversed on appeal. Calcerrada v. American Railroad Co., 35 P.R.R. 801.
Incidentally we desire to say that in the former appeal the American Railroad Company, the then appellee, did not press for an affirmance on the ground that evidence in favor of plaintiff in opposition to the evidence of negligence may in certain cases be disregarded. There is some conflict in the authorities, but the current of them is that, on motion for nonsuit when the evidence that favors a plaintiff is negligible or a verdict in his favor would definitely be set aside, the court may grant the motion. Estate of Morey, 147 Cal. 495; Grant v. Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Ry. Co. (Mont.), 252 Pac. 382; 38 Cyc. 1556.
In the former appeal the appellant company also said in its brief that the evidence of negligence was insufficient, but an inspection of the record and of our former opinion shows that the ground of action of the court below, if not the only ground, was the contributory negligence of the plaintiff.
It is also a debatable matter whether on a motion for nonsuit the court may not consider the sufficiency of the complaint. As a matter of policy a motion for nonsuit is questionably advisable, but if the evidence is plainly insufficient the defendant should submit his case. Then a complete res adjudícala arises.
At the second trial of this case the plaintiff submitted no new evidence for his case in chief. The parties by stipulation agreed that the former evidence should stand and be considered by the court as such evidence in chief. All objections and exceptions were waived, barring the defense of prescription, and perhaps the amendments to the complaint. The rebutting evidence in regard to the matter of contributory negligence was unimportant, as we shall see. Substantially the case was tried on the same evidence for the plaintiff with the additional countervailing evidence of the defendant. Now, when the former opinion of this court is examined it will necessarily be deduced that we did not affirm the judgment, because we considered there was a conflict in the evidence on the point decided by the judgment of nonsuit. The court below did not attempt to resolve the conflict.
Assuming that the court meant to say that the action of the defendant was wanton or willful, there was no evidence of wantonness or willfulness in this case. While detached cars went down a public street on which the principal tracks of the branch ran, this mere occurrence, while it may readily amount to gross negligence, does not tend to prove wantonness, willfulness or the like. From the record no one knows how the accident occurred. There was no evidence to show that the detached cars were deliberately started by an employee of the company. As appellant company points out, detached cars may move due to something other than the voluntary act of defendant’s agents. Nor was the idea of wantonness or willfulness alleged in the complaint or made a real issue at the trial. Under these circumstances the imputation of wantonness, willfulness or the like needs no further discussion.
The driver placed his truck on the rails of the company and left it there while he went about to discharge the load. As on this track trains may run at any moment, this conduct was clearly negligence.
The attempt to exonerate the plaintiff was to show a permission, tolerance, or custom by the agents of the defendant. Thereunder people did in fact from time to time discharge freight from their trucks at the spot where the'
Not only do these improbabilities or failures of proof exist, but the company introduced very positive evidence to the effect that no one in fact had ever authorized the establishment of such a custom or tolerated such an abuse. The possibility or probability is that the spot chosen is a more convenient one for the discharge of goods and that the agents of the company had received goods there without much protest. When the truck driver went to the highly dangerous spot he did it at his own risk.
When it is remembered that the original trial of the ease found the plaintiff guilty of contributory negligence, that the case was practically submitted on the same evidence plus countervailing evidence of the defendant, and that the testimony in rebuttal, was unsubstantial, we may say that the company made out a complete defense. The rebutting testimony tended to. show that some person after the accident continued to discharge his goods at the spot with the permission of the company. The evidence was not persuasive.
The appellant company alleges also that no negligence was shown. To put the matter briefly, we doubt if a case of negligence on the part of the agents of the company was fully made out. Given the circumstances of the detached cars running on a public street, the proof of negligence
We agree definitely with the defendant that the allegata and the probata as found by the court do not correspond. The complaint charged the negligent uncoupling of the cars. The opinion found a voluntary act on the part of the defendant. Negligence is one thing. Voluntarily to do a wrongful act is another. This aspect of the case acquires greater importance than it customarily would by reason of the court’s attitude toward the question of contributory negligence, as heretofore outlined.
So far we have been discussing principally the evidence in the case and we have covered the second, third, seventh and eighth assignments of error inasmuch as these matters necessarily affected the fundamental merits of the case. In its fourth assignment of error the appellant said that the court also erred in holding that the plaintiff had the same right in a public street as had the defendant. Of course, in a public street anybody has a right to pass, but the jurisprudence is fairly clear that as trains can only move on rails they have a certain preference over pedestrians and moving vehicles. Necessarily neither a pedestrian nor a truck has a right to be stationed on the tracks of a railroad company.
The fifth and sixth assignments of error may be treated together. They are as follows:
“5. The district court erred and committed an abuse of discretion in allowing the plaintiff on the day of the trial of the case to amend the complaint to aver that the damaged truck was HP-229 instead of HP-239.
“6. The district court erred in dismissing the new matter of special defense alleging that the action had prescribed in accordance with section 1869 of the Civil Code of Porto Rico, and in rendering judgment against the defendant.”
The complaint in this case made no attempt to describe the truck other than by its number. At the trial the defendant said that it had no notice of an injury to truck HP-229 and an examination of the evidence showed that both parties went into great detail over what were the damages to the truck. Hence it was important that the defendant should have been duly advised of the particular truck which had suffered damages. A plaintiff might easily have several causes of action due to accidents to trucks and certainly if. he confused the different trucks in claiming damages when he came to amend he might be stating a totally different cause of action for a particular truck. Nevertheless, the new matter of the answer showed that the defendant was duly advised of the particular truck that was injured. A previous’ complaint had been filed where the suit was begun not by the real owner but by his chauffeur, and under all the circum-stnces we think the error,' if any, was not prejudicial.
The defendant objected that the amendment came too late. The plaintiff showed to the satisfaction of the court ■ that the error was due to a mistaken reproduction by counsel’s own stenographer. Given the fact that the plaintiff had permitted his chauffeur to bring a cause of action, if this had been drawn to the attention of the court, we might not have considered it as an abuse of discretion if the court had refused to allow the plaintiff to amend.- Under the circum--
We come then to the first assignment of error that the complaint failed to state a cause of action. All the foregoing discussion demonstrates how necessary it is for a defendant to he duly advised of the plaintiff’s cause of action. We agree with the appellant company that the complaint was defective in failing to give the defendant any notice of the supposed manner in which the accident occurred. Likewise the appellant, relying on the case of Miranda v. P. R. Ry. Light & Power Co., 31 P.R.R. 738, urged that plaintiff failed to state the duty that the defendant owed to the plaintiff other than by saying that the goods were discharged by the truck at-the customary place. We question, with the appellant, whether to say that a custom arose is a statement of an ultimate fact and whether it should not be necessary to accumulate some facts to show how the custom arose. This becomes more obvious when we realize how difficult a custom to load and unload on the tracks could arise.
The greatest insistence of the appellant is that the complaint failed to state that the accident was due to the negligence of the defendant’s employees in the ordinary or usual course of their duties, and the defendant cites some authorities to this effect and we have added others following the citations from Cyc. Cincinnati, etc., R. R. Co. v. Voght, 26 Ind. App. 665, 60 N. E. 797; Railroad Co. v. Adams, 25 Ind. App. 164, 56 N. E. 101; Gordon v. Coal, etc., Co., 164 Ala. 203, 51 So. 316; 33 Cyc. 1053, note 87. If the demurrer had turned on this point alone we think the complaint sufficiently drew attention to the fact that the accident was caused by the negligence of the agents of the defendant in the ordinary course of their duty.
The plaintiff appealed on the ground of the insufficiency of the damages awarded. As the case must be reversed on the ground that the plaintiff has no cause of action, it will
The judgment in No. 4336 will be reversed, making it unnecessary to take any action in No. 4254 other than filing it away.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.