Source: https://openjurist.org/287/us/502
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 12:00:21+00:00

Document:
ATLANTIC COAST LINE R. CO. et al.
Messrs. Henry E. Davis, of Florence, S.C., and Thomas W. Davis, of Wilmington, N.C., for appellants.
Mr. W. C. Davis, of Manning, S.C., for appellee.
This is an action brought by appellee in a South Carolina state court of first instance against the railroad company and its engineer to recover for injuries said to have been sustained by her as the result of a collision at a public highway crossing between an automobile in which she was riding and a passenger train of the company. The complaint alleges several grounds of negligence, but the only one necessary for our consideration is that appellants negligently failed to give the crossing signals provided for by the state law.
Appellants answered the complaint, denying liability and setting up affirmative defenses. The cause was tried before the court and a jury. At the close of the evidence, appellants moved for a directed verdict in their favor upon the ground, among others, that sections 4903 and 4925 of the Code, as they had been construed, constituted a violation of the due process of law and equal protection of law clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, and an unlawful attempt to regulate interstate commerce. The motion was overruled, and the jury, after being instructed, returned a verdict in favor of plaintiff, upon which judgment was duly entered. The state Supreme Court (168 S.E. 143) affirmed the judgment.
The attack upon the statute as contravening the due process clause is based upon the contention, shortly stated, that the state Supreme Court, by affirming the judgment, in effect construed the statute to mean that failure to give the prescribed signals is negligence per se and raises a presumption that such failure is the proximate cause of the collision and warrants recovery by the plaintiff without further proof, and that such presumption does not vanish from the case upon the introduction of evidence by the railroad company, but remains throughout to be considered by the jury as evidence. We have italicized the words which are said by appellants to constitute the crux of their contention.
Appellants review many decisions of the state Supreme Court dealing with the question, which seem not to be altogether in agreement; but it is not necessary to analyze these decisions and from them attempt to extract the rule. The court below has done this and reached a conclusion contrary to that advanced by appellants; and that is enough for the purposes of our decision here. If the assailed provisions as construed and applied in the present case afford due process, appellants cannot complain that in earlier cases they were so construed and applied as to deny due process to other litigants. Compare Great Northern Ry. Co. v. Sunburst Oil & Refining Co., 287 U.S. 358, 53 S.Ct. 145, 77 L.Ed. 360 (Docember 5, 1932); Patterson v. Colorado, 205 U.S. 454, 460, 27 S.Ct. 556, 51 L.Ed. 879, 10 Ann.Cas. 689; Brinkerhoff-Faris Trust & Sav. Co. v. Hill, 281 U.S. 673, 680, 50 S.Ct. 451, 74 L.Ed. 1107; Dunbar v. City of New York, 251 U.S. 516, 518, 519, 40 S.Ct. 250, 64 L.Ed. 384; Tidal Oil Co. v. Flanagan, 263 U.S. 444, 452, 44 S.Ct. 197, 68 L.Ed. 382; Fleming v. Fleming, 264 U.S. 29, 31, 44 S.Ct. 246, 68 L.Ed. 547.
And the effect of the ruling of the trial court is that the South Carolina statute was comparable with that of Mississippi and not with that of Georgia. It must be supposed that the court, with this in mind, intended to charge the jury in accordance with the language which it had just quoted. True, the jury was not told in so many words that, where countervailing evidence has been put in, the presumption comes to an end, but we think this is the fair purport of the language of the court to the effect that appellants may rebut the presumption by their evidence, and that then all the evidence must be considered in determining the question of proximate cause. Certainly, the charge contains no affirmative words directing the jury in that event to consider the presumption as evidence to be weighed with other evidence in the case. Under these circumstances, a request for a more explicit instruction in exact accord with what had just been read as to the Mississippi statute undoubtedly would have been granted; but that request was not made. Instructions are entitled to a reasonable interpretation, and are not generally to be regarded as the subject of error on account of not being sufficiently definite, if omissions complained of are not at the time pointed out by the excepting party. Castle et al. v. Bullard, 23 How. 172, 189, 190, 16 L.Ed. 424; First Unitarian Soc. v. Faulkner et al., 91 U.S. 415, 423, 23 L.Ed. 283; Tweed's Case, 16 Wall. 504, 515, 516, 21 L.Ed. 389; Locke v. United States, 2 Cliff. 574, 15 Fed.Cas. 740, 742, No. 8,442.
It follows that the statutory presumption as construed by the court below is free from constitutional infirmity under the due process clause.
The objection that, because the presumption applies only to railway companies, its effect is to deprive appellants of the equal protection of the laws is clearly untenable. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. Georgia, 234 U.S. 280, 289, 34 S.Ct. 829, 58 L.Ed. 1312; Kansas City Southern R. Co. v. Anderson, 233 U.S. 325, 330, 34 S.Ct. 599, 58 L.Ed. 983; Seaboard Air Line Ry. v. Seegers, 207 U.S. 73, 76, 28 S.Ct. 28, 52 L.Ed. 108; Mobile, J. & K.C.R. Co. v. Turnipseed, supra; Missouri Pac. Railway Co. v. Mackey, 127 U.S. 205, 209, 8 S.Ct. 1161, 32 L.Ed. 107. There is even less ground for the final contention that the statutory presumption under consideration violates the interstate commerce clause of the Federal Constitution. Upon that point we are satisfied with what was said by the court below upon the authority, among other cases, of Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. Georgia, supra, 234 U.S. at page 290, 34 S.Ct. 829, 58 L.Ed. 1312, and Southern Railway Co. v. King, 217 U.S. 524, 531—533, 30 S.Ct. 594, 54 L.Ed. 868.
In addition to the Turnipseed Case, see Bailey v. Alabama, 219 U.S. 219, 238, 31 S.Ct. 145, 55 L.Ed. 191; Luria v. United States, 231 U.S. 9, 25, 34 S.Ct. 10, 58 L.Ed. 101; Yee Hem v. United States, 268 U.S. 178, 183, 45 S.Ct. 470, 69 L.Ed. 904.

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