Case ID: ga_101/html/0140-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Fish, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

HENDLEY v. MAYOR & COUNCIL OF GRIFFIN.
    Under the evidence introduced in the present case, the questions at issue between the parties ought to have been submitted to and passed upon by a jury, and it was error to grant a nonsuit.
    Argued April 16,
    — Decided May 7, 1897.
    Action for damages. Before Judge Beck. Spalding supe-: rior court. January term, 1896.
    It appears from the testimony, that in July, 1893, the plaintiff, with her husband, was sitting in a chair in a wagon drawn by a mule, and when they came to the bridge which crossed a small stream or branch running through a public street in the city, the mule shied at a hole in the plank of the bridge next to the ground as they approached, whirled around, and tilted the wagon so that plaintiff was thrown out and injured in the manner described. Neither plaintiff nor her husband saw the hole until the mule shied ; it was usually a gentle animal, she had driven it many times. She testified that the hole “ was right along where we travel over. It was not at the end ; it was in the bridge, in the track where they travel over. The mule got on the bridge right up to the hole.” Her husband testified that the mule became scared at the hole and a rock which had been set in it. The rock weighed 40 or 50 pounds, but did not completely stop up the hole, which was 12 to 16 or 18 inches wide. The bridge was from 5 to 7 feet in width, and 10 to 12 feet long. The hole was about the center of the wagon track, about where the mule would walk. After the accident they crossed over with the wagon. From other testimony it appeared that the hole had been made by the plank having become rotten where the wheels of vehicles would strike the bridge. It had been noticed by one witness a week previously, and by another two or three weeks before. It was about a foot and a half long, and exposed the water in the stream. The rock had been placed into it by one of the witnesses to give people notice, this being three or four days before the accident. The place has been repaired since that time. There was plenty of room on the bridge for the animal to have walked around the hole, but the wheel of the wagon would have gone into the hole; etc. One witness testified that the hole was not in the plank of the bridge, but was where the bank had sloughed off.
    
      E. J. Reagan, for plaintiff.
    
      W H. Beck and E. W Hammond, for defendant.
   Fish, J.

Sallie A. Hendley sued the Mayor and Council of Griffin for damages, which she alleged resulted to her from personal injuries received in crossing a defective bridge in that city. After plaintiff’s evidence .was submitted, the court granted a nonsuit, and she excepted. The declaration set forth a cause of action, and, in our opinion, the evidence introduced made out a prima facie case for the plaintiff. The court below, therefore, ought not to have granted the nonsuit.

Judgment reversed.

All the Justices concurring.