Court Opinion

ID: 9828828
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 18:46:29.762364+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:53.586709
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
In an able motion for rehearing, ap-pellee earnestly insists that, inasmuch as two eminent physicians, employees of the railway company, testified positively that her.nia cannot be produced by overstraining one’s strength, and that appellee’s injury was not so produced, we Were clearly in error in holding that “ruptures from overstrain appear to be a commonly known resulting injury”; that the only risk assumed by the employee was such dangers as were known to him or ought to have been known to him; that he testified that he knew nothing about hernia or how it. might be caused; and that, because physicians themselves were at variance as to how same may be caused, the court could not as a matter of law say that he could be chargeable as a layman with knowledge that his overstraining himself might produce hernia.
.It may be that in this respect appellee is correct. Certainly such a contention appears reasonable. But the decisions, as we understand them, in cases involving over-straining one’s strength, are not based upon the hypothesis that the employee must anticipate a particular injury resulting from overtaxing his strength, or- that he must be cognizant of the particular injury caused thereby. But rather that he is cognizant of, and the sole judge of, his own strength, and, if any injury results directly from his act in overtaxing it, whether it be a hernia, strain of a muscle, rupture of a blood vessel, or otherwise, he assumes the risk of such injury whether he knew that that particular injury might result or not. Such is our understanding of the decisions on this matter. And, if we are correct in this, appel-lee’s contention, admitting same to be correct, does not alter the conclusion reached by us. For this reason, the motion is overruled.
Overruled,