NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILWAY COMPANY v. JONES
United States Circuit Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, February 5, 1906.
Reported in 144 Federal Reporter, 47.
Gilbert, J.[[192]] ... The defendant in error was a miner of the age of 34 years, and was in the full possession of his senses. According to his own testimony, he walked upon the railroad track a distance of more than half a mile without once looking back or stopping to listen for an approaching train. In so doing, it must be held that he was guilty of gross negligence, which, irrespective of negligence in the failure of the engineer to discover him on the track, is sufficient to bar his right of recovery. It was no excuse for his failure to take such precautions that the wind was blowing in his face, or that the noise of a waterfall may have deadened the sound of an approaching train. Those circumstances only rendered the use of his senses the more imperative. It was his duty continually to exercise vigilance.
On the authority of Inland & Seaboard Coasting Co. v. Tolson, 139 U. S. 551–558, 11 Sup. Ct. 653, 35 L. Ed. 270; Grand Trunk Ry. Co. v. Ives, 144 U. S. 408–429, 12 Sup. Ct. 679, 36 L. Ed. 485; and Bogan v. Carolina Central Ry. Co., 129 N. C. 154, 39 S. E. 808, 55 L. R. A. 418, the defendant in error invokes the doctrine that the contributory negligence of the party injured will not defeat the action, if it be shown that the defendant might, by the exercise of reasonable care and prudence, have avoided the consequences of the injured party’s negligence. In the first of these decisions, the doctrine was applied in a case where the plaintiff, a wharfinger, was standing with his foot between the timbers of a wharf, to deliver freight to a vessel which was about to make a landing there, and which struck the wharf with such force as to crush his foot. But the court held that the doctrine was applicable, for the reason that the jury might well have been of opinion that, while there was some negligence on the plaintiff’s part in standing where and as he did, yet the officers of the boat knew just where and how he stood, and might have avoided injuring him, if they had used reasonable care to prevent the steamboat from striking the wharf with unusual and unnecessary violence. In the Ives Case, the plaintiff’s intestate was killed while attempting to cross a railroad track. There was evidence of negligence on the part of the railroad company. On the part of the plaintiff’s intestate there was no evidence as to what precaution he took before placing himself in the place of danger, except that, at a distance of about seventy-six feet from the track, he stopped several minutes, presumably to listen for trains; that while there a train passed; and that, soon after it had passed, and while the noise caused by it was still quite distinct, he proceeded across the track and was struck by another train. The court held that the question of contributory negligence of the plaintiff’s intestate was properly left to the jury, as one to be determined under all the circumstances of the case, but incidentally proceeded to affirm the rule above quoted, citing Davies v. Mann, 10 M. & W. 546; Inland & Seaboard Coasting Co. v. Tolson, and other cases. There was no evidence in the Ives Case that the plaintiff’s intestate was seen by those who were managing the train in time to have avoided the accident. The court, in that case, however, reaffirmed the rule that a traveller, on going upon a railroad track, ought to make vigilant use of his senses of sight and hearing, and listen for signals, and look in the different directions from which a train might come, and said:—
“If by neglect of this duty he suffers injury from a passing train, he cannot recover of the company, although it may itself be chargeable with negligence, or have failed to give the signals required by statute, or be running at the time at a speed exceeding the legal rate.”
It cannot be contended that in the Ives Case the Supreme Court intended to lay down the broad rule that no contributory negligence of the party injured will defeat his right to recover, if it be shown that the defendant might, by the exercise of reasonable care and prudence, have avoided the consequences of that negligence. To so hold would be to destroy the whole doctrine of contributory negligence. As applied to the present case, it would mean that the plaintiff in error was bound to know that the defendant in error was upon its track, and that he would not step aside in time to avoid the train. Such is not the doctrine of cases such as Northern Pacific Railroad v. Freeman[[193]] and the other decisions which we have cited above. The doctrine of “the last clear chance,” so invoked by the defendant in error, originated in Davies v. Mann, in which it was held that the plaintiff’s want of ordinary care in that case did not constitute contributory negligence, because it was a remote cause or mere condition of the injury, and did not proximately contribute to it, and because the negligence of the defendant arose subsequently to that of the plaintiff, and the latter’s negligence was so obvious as to have been discoverable by the exercise of ordinary care. That doctrine has no application to a case where the plaintiff voluntarily places himself in a place of danger from which he has present means of escape, and continues there without exercising precautions which an ordinarily prudent man would exercise. We have nothing here to do with the law applicable to a case where the injured person is found in a place of danger, as upon a railroad trestle, from which he is powerless to extricate himself on the approach of a train, and where his situation is discovered, or ought to have been discovered, by those in charge of the train.
JONES v. CHARLESTON & WESTERN CAROLINA RAILWAY COMPANY
Supreme Court, South Carolina, April Term, 1901.
Reported in 61 South Carolina Reports, 556.
Action under statute by administrator of Susan V. Jones to recover for her death. Mrs. Jones was killed by a train backing down upon her while she was walking on the railroad track. Plaintiff’s evidence tended to show that the track at that place had been accustomed to be used by the public as a walkway with the knowledge and acquiescence of the defendant company. Mrs. Jones, when killed, was on a trestle. The train was backing down behind her, at a speed of from five to ten miles an hour. There was evidence on plaintiff’s part that no bell was rung, no whistle blown, no warning given of the approach of the train; also that there was no lookout on the train, and no rear-end lights.
Defendant requested the following instruction (No. 6):—