Court Opinion

ID: 9584276
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:46:14.492626+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:07:22.327627
License: Public Domain

Jordan, Presiding Judge,
dissenting. I dissent from the holding in Division 1 of the opinion to the effect that the court did not err in refusing to give the requested charge that the plaintiff was under a duty to exercise ordinary care for his own safety.
I perceive this to be the law, even in a F. E. L. A. case. *723This was clearly held in Atlantic C. L. R. C. v. Dixon, 189 F2d 525, 527, in which the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals said, "It is of course the duty of an employee to exercise reasonable and ordinary care for his own safety. If the employee’s negligence was the sole proximate cause of his injury, he cannot recover. If both employer and employee are guilty of negligence, the employee may recover, but his damages will be diminished in proportion to the amount of negligence attributable to the employee.” In the instant case the trial court correctly charged that contributory negligence of the employee would not bar recovery but would proportionately diminish the damages, and that the employee could recover unless his injury was caused solely by his own negligence. These correct charges should have been coupled with the railroad’s request to the effect that the employee’s failure to exercise ordinary care for his own safety would amount to negligence on his part. See Southern R. Co. v. Cabe, 109 Ga. App. 432 (136 SE2d 438), where we held that a requested charge which required a plaintiff in a F. E. L. A. case to exercise ordinary care for his own safety would have been a correct charge except for the fact that the request contained objectionable language which does not exist in the case here under review.
Appellee’s counsel takes the position that once defendant’s negligence was proved in that it failed to furnish a safe place for the employee to work, that the employee would then be entitled to recover the full amount of his injury regardless of any negligence on his part. Under this reasoning the employee could blindly and heedlessly place himself in a known position of peril with utter failure to exercise even the slightest care for his own safety. I do not understand this to be the law.
In my opinion the defendant was entitled to the requested charge, which in connection with the other principles charged, would have correctly instructed the jury in this case. Failure to so instruct amounted to reversible error.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge Hall and Judges Eberhardt and Pannell concur in this dissent.