Court Opinion

ID: 9830581
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:17:51.37595+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:24.489323
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
We have carefully considered appellee’s motion for rehearing, and are of the opinion that it should be. overruled, and it has been so.ordered.
In the opinion heretofore filed in this case *292we say: “If the testimony had shown that deceased was upon the track in the actual course of the car, and that therefore he would inevitably be injured unless the car was stopped, the charge of the court would have been correct as applied to that state of facts, at least it could not have operated to the prejudice of appellants.” This much of the opinion we now withdraw. We do this because the language quoted, standing alone, is not. strictly accurate and is probably misleading. It would not in any instance appear that a person, even walking between the rails of a track, ahead of a moving car, would certainly and inevitably be injured, if the car was not stopped, if it also appeared that he was in control of his powers of locomotion. Such certainty of injury could only become obvious where it was apparent that the person so exposed could not leave the track, as, for instance, that he. was down and helpless, either between the rails or so near the track as to be in the actual course of the ear. One having his power of locomotion has always the chance of saving himself at the last instant, and it will not do to say that a motorman in charge of a moving car, seeing a person walking in the course of the car, with his back to it, apparently oblivious of its approach, may speculate upon the possibility that the person will hear the noise of the car or the gong and save himself at the last instant. As stated in the main opinion, it is the knowledge of the danger, and not the certainty of the injury, that calls forth the action of the operatives to use all the means at hand, consistent with the safety of the car, to stop.
Overruled.