Court Opinion

ID: 9812018
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:35:49.420241+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:23:55.544322
License: Public Domain

Coon, J.,
dissenting. There are only two views of the case in which defendant company can be considered to have been guilty of negligence, and there is no evidence to support either. The first is that of the engineer, when he saw the plaintiff walking on the track of the other railroad (150 or 200 yards away) knew that the train he was meeting was coming at such a rate of speed that the two trains would meet just at that point where plaintiff would be vhen they met; or that the child was frightened and attracting her attention, and that the oil mill near by was running and making such a noise that she could not hear the train; and that she would remain there between the tracks until the trains met; then and in that event it would have been negligence not to increase his speed to such a high rate as to pass her before meeting the other train, or to have slowed his speed or stopped so as to' allow the other train to pass her first. The second is that if the engineer, after discovering her peril (which did not exist until the two trains were closing in on her) could have stopped the train and prevented the injury and failed to use his best efforts to do so, then defendant company would be guilty of negligence.
It is certain that the engineer had a right to assume that plaintiff could and would take care of herself and boy, whom she was caring for and protecting; no obstruction existed to prevent her from getting off the track on the opposite side rather than between the tracks while in sight of two trains coming from opposite directions, and the law does not impose upon engineers the duty of supposing that people will do the foolish rather than the sensible thing.
Or, there may be a third view, to-wit, that it was negli*305gence in defendant company in placing the two parallel tracks so close together that trespassers could not stand with safety between trains meeting along the route, but I do not subscribe to such doctrine. I therefore think the Court erred in not sustaining the motion to nonsuit.