Case Name: Central of Georgia Railway Company v. Duggan
Court: Supreme Court of Georgia
Jurisdiction: Georgia
Decision Date: 1905-12-21
Citations: 124 Ga. 493
Docket Number: 
Parties: Central of Georgia Railway Company v. Duggan.
Judges: All the Justices concur.
Reporter: Georgia Reports
Volume: 124
Pages: 493–494

Head Matter:
Central of Georgia Railway Company v. Duggan.
Submitted November 18,
Decided December 21, 1905.
Certiorari. Before Judge Seabrook. Effingham superior court. May 8, 1905.
Duggan sued the railway company, in a justice’s court, for damages on account of the killing of a calf by a train on the defendant’s railroad. At the trial he testified that he found his calf lying at the side of the railroad after the train had passed, and that apparently it had just been killed. The defendant admitted the killing and the value of the calf. A witness introduced by the defendant testified: “I am an engineer on the Central of Georgia Railway. I was running the engine of the passenger-train that killed Mr- Dug-gan’s calf. . . On approaching Eden that morning I blew the station signal, also the road-crossing signal, before I saw the calf. When I first saw the calf it was about 150 yards beyond the public crossing, about 5 or 6 feet from the track. It got on the track and ran some 40 or 50 feet before the engine was on it and killed it. As soon as I saw it I blew the stock alarm and applied the brakes. My engine was in good order, well equipped to control the train. I could not have stopped the train as quickly, going at the speed it was, had I reversed. Therefore I did not reverse the engine. I was in schedule, going 30 miles an hour, when I first saw the calf, and at the rate of 25 miles an hour when I struck the calf. I blew when I got to the road crossing; did not continue to blow till I got to the crossing. We are not allowed to keep on blowing when the public crossing is in a town. It is true that if I had had my train under such control when I reached the crossing that I could have stopped the train at the crossing, I would have done it and would not have killed the calf, because I saw the calf when I was about 100 feet from the crossing. The calf was about 150 feet beyond the crossing. The reason I did not see the calf sooner was that it was behind the mail crane and about the same distance from the track as the mail crane. The mail crane is about 4 feet high and two and a half feet wide. It obstructed my view of the calf until I got in about 200 feet of the calf. I could not have done more to save the-calf. But for the obstruction of the mail crane I would have had ample time to have saved it, though I was running 30 miles an hour. I blew four blasts when I got to the public crossing blow-poát.” John Young testified that he was fireman on the engine when the cal f was struck, and was busy firing and therefore did not see anything; he only knew that the engineer blew the station signal and the road-crossing signal. No further testimony was introduced. The trial resulted in a verdict for the plaintiff. The defendant, in its petition for certiorari, the overruling of which is assigned as error, complained that the verdict was contrary to law and the evidence.

Opinion:
Evans, J.
The facts of this case bring it within.the decision announced in Central Ry. Co. v. Neidlinger, 110 Ga. 329, wherein this court ruled that where stock is killed, not at a- public-road crossing, but some distance beyond, and the stock suddenly came on the track at a point so nearly in front of the locomotive that, notwithstanding all possible efforts, the progress of the train could not be arrested before the stock was struck, the owner could not recover of the railway company in a suit for damages, although it appeared that in approaching the crossing the engineer did not observe the requirement of the law as to checking the speed of the train, his failure so to do not being the proximate cause of the injury.
Judgment reversed.
All the Justices concur.
Lawton & Cunningham and A. C. Wright, for plaintiff in error.