Sweet v. Chicago, M. & St. P. Ry. Co.
Sweet v. Chicago, M. & St. P. Ry. Co.
Opinion of the Court
In the circuit court for Kingsbury county, respondent recovered judgment against appellant for the value of a colt alleged to have been killed by appellant’s train of cars.
The company appeals, and assigns errors as follows: Insufficieney of evidence to support the verdict, error of the court in
The defendant offered no evidence, and that of the plaintiff as to the only fact in dispute, to wit, the killing by defendant, was very brief, and came from his wife.. She says that about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, from their home, half .a mile distant, she saw the colt running north, on the east side of the track, with the train approaching and near to it. Reaching the.highway crossing, it turned to cross the track. She did not see the train strike the colt, but immediately after the train passed she went up stairs, and looked out-of the window to see if she could see the colt, but could not. She says the train .“did no.t slow up any. ” Plaintiff testified that an hour or two after .he found the colt “near the crossing, just on the west side of it, with two ribs, on the left side, stove in, and his left leg was useless; his hind foot was also badly cut up and bruised,” but “no bones was broken.” The colt died that evening about 9 o’clock. While this evidence is not entirely certain or conclusive as to the fact of the injury by defendant’s train, it was sufficient to send the case to the jury upon that question. It was not indispensable that there be an eye witness to the very fact of striking. In Stutsman v. Railroad Co. (Iowa) 6 N. W. 63, the court said: “No person saw the horse struck by the engine. The plaintiff relied mainly on the character of the injury, and we are constrained to say the jury were fully wrrranted in concluding therefrom that the horse was struck by an engine on the defendant’s road.” In Clark v. Railroad Co., 55 Iowa, 455, 8 N. W. 328, a horse was’ found in a pasture, through which defendant’s road ran, in a crippled and bruised condition. No one saw the horse struck by the train, and yet it was held to have been properly left to the jury to determine whether the horse was injured by the train. The fact of the presence of the colt upon the track in near proximity to an approaching train; that it apparently attempted to cross the track; that its ribs were “stove in” upon the side which, under the
Reference
- Status
- Published
- Syllabus
- 1. In an action against a railroad company for killing stock at a highway crossing on its right of way, an eyewitness to the collision is not indispensable to a recovery. 2. Facts fairly proved, from which different unprejudiced minds might properly draw different conclusions as to the cause of the death or injury proved, are sufficient to send the case to the jury on that question. 3. In such case the verdict of the jury, affirmed by the trial court on motion ior new trial, will not be disturbed in this court. (Syllabus by the Court.