Court Opinion

ID: 9643302
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:24:49.468237+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:56.398577
License: Public Domain

WILBUR K. MILLER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I agree, of course, with these statements in the court’s opinion: “ * * * To justify the submission of a case to the jury and to permit its verdict to stand, it is necessary that there be substantial evidence to support either conclusion that may be reached. A mere scintilla of evidence is not sufficient. Substantial evidence is evidence of such quality and weight as would be sufficient to justify a reasonable man in drawing the inference of fact that is sought to be sustained.” But the court should have added to those observations the settled rule that when the testimony of a witness is positively contradicted by the physical facts, the jury should not be permitted to give it credence. A verdict cannot be sustained when based, as it was in this case, solely upon the statements of a reckless witness whose falsehoods about the physical facts were exposed by the photographic truth, and whose theory of causation was inherently impossible. Such testimony is wholly without probative value and is not “substantial evidence” which the court correctly says is necessary to support a verdict.
The following resumé of the evidence will show clearly that the case should not have been submitted to the jury. Osborne McKinney, the driver of the death car, had taken the two young women to a meeting in the District of Columbia on Saturday night. About midnight the three proceeded to nearby Maryland to visit what McKinney termed a “joint” which is shown by the photographs received in evidence to be the Thomas Beer Tavern just beyond the Millrace Crossing on the B. & O. tracks. McKinney crossed the side track safely but, when he reached the main track some thirty feet further, he missed or left the crossing and found himself on the ties to the left of it, with his front wheels, or at least the left one, against the rail, which was some six and one-half inches higher than the ties. He could not extricate himself and, seeing that a train was coming, he shouted to the girls to get out. McKinney himself left the two-door sedan through the left door. Mrs. Lanford, who was alone in the back seat, performed the difficult task of getting out the same door, climbing by or over the driver’s seat, and escaped to safety. But Isabell Postom, who was seated on the front seat with McKinney, did not leave the car and was killed when the train struck it. She was not asleep but had been chatting with her companions as they approached the crossing.
The automobile was in good repair, having just passed inspection, and its lights enabled McKinney to have a clear view of the crossing as he approached it over a perfectly straight road. He said he was traveling at ten miles per hour and in second gear. He did not stop and look before at*58tempting to cross the main track.1' He was familiar with the crossing. .That is about all McKinney 'knew concerning what happened just before the train struck the automobile at 12:50 a. m. Sunday. He did not know why his car missed or left the crossing and landed on the ties and against the rail. He never attempted to explain why ■he drove off the left end of a fourteen-foot crossing.
On Monday McKinney returned to the scene to look for the girls’ pocketbooks. While there he examined the crossing and found it, he said, to be of gravel loosely piled between the rails with nothing at the ends (on each side of the road) to contain it. There were planks on the outside of the rails but none inside, he told the jury. He deduced that the loose gravel had caused him to skid -off the crossing three or four feet to his left and to become helplessly lodged against the far rail. He testified that the crossing was about eight feet wide, “Just wide enough for one car to cross”, but that the road itself was wide enough for two cars to pass. This was the evidence, and the only evidence, from which the jury concluded the crossing was negligently constructed or maintained and that its condition caused the accident.2
*59Uncontradicted testimony of railroad employees showed that, a few weeks before, the crossing had been reconstructed with amesite, a material which almost immediately solidifies into a flintlike hardness. I regret that photographs of the crossing taken on Wednesday following the accident and received in evidence cannot practicably be reproduced here because they show conclusively that the crossing was not of the nature which McKinney described. It is not suggested that the railroad company had been so venal as to alter the construction of the crossing between the time of the accident and the time the pictures were taken. Confronted with one of the photographs, McKinney complained, “This picture don’t show no gravel.” The photographs show that each rail of the main track had a heavy plank on either side of it and parallel with it, all flush with the top of the rails. They also show at each end of the crossing a sort of bulkhead, a heavy plank or beam between the rails, parallel with the ties, and above the surface of the crossing proper. The photographs do not show a loosely piled gravel bed, but on the contrary a hard-surface crossing. McKinney’s statement that the crossing was about eight feet wide and “Just wide enough for one car to cross” was contradicted by a photograph in which the crossing is plainly wider than the road approaching it. McKinney’s comment from the stand as the picture was exhibited to him was, “It looks like a larger crossing than what it was then.”
Had there been in fact a bed of gravel loosely piled on the crossing, an automobile entering it in second gear at ten miles per hour might have churned in it, but every automobile driver knows that it would not have skidded upward over the elevated confining plank at the end of the crossing and landed some three or four feet to the left. But McKinney’s story about gravel loosely piled simply was not true, as the photographs plainly show.
And if McKinney’s testimony of a bed of loosely piled and unconfined gravel be construed' as a statement that, at the time of the accident, there were loose pieces of ballast on the hard-surfaced crossing, his theory of causation is nevertheless incredible. For it is against natural .law and common experience that loose rock on the crossing threw the automobile three or four feet to the left and over the elevated bulkhead when the car was moving at a rate of only ten miles per hour and in second gear.
Unless the verdict was based on mere caprice, the jury must have believed McKinney’s story that there was nothing between the rails except a bed of gravel loosely piled and unconfined at the ends; but it had no right to believe McKinney’s story and should not have been permitted to believe it, because the photographs reveal a crossing of an entirely different construction.
In a situation such as this, the law is clear and well established. When the testimony of a witness as to physical facts is demonstrated by photographs to be absolutely false, a verdict based on that evidence alone cannot stand. In Baltimore & O. R. Co. v. Muldoon, 3 Cir., 1939, 102 F.2d 151, 152, the court said:
“The principal question raised by the-appeal is whether the court should not have declared the plaintiff guilty of contributory negligence as a matter of law and directed a verdict for the defendant.
“In determining this question the testimony must be read in the light most advantageous to the plaintiff, all conflicts therein being resolved in his favor, and he must be given the benefit of every fact and inference which may reasonably be deduced from the evidence. * * * Nevertheless any testimony which is contradicted by clearly proved and uncontrovertible physical facts must be rejected.”
The court then applied the rule by rejecting the plaintiff’s testimony that when he *60stopped his truck at the railroad track he was only able to see fifty feet to the west because photographs showed that at the point where the plaintiff stopped he had an uninterrüpted view to the west along the railroad tracks of more than two thousand feet.
Time and again federal courts have reiterated the rule. It was said in Hickey v. Missouri Pacific Railroad Corp., 8 Cir., 1925, 8 F.2d 128, 131:
“It must be conceded that, on the motion by defendant for a directed verdict, plaintiff was entitled to have taken in his behalf the most favorable view of the testimony. He was not entitled,, however, to have credence given to testimony if it conflicted with plain physical facts.”
The court stated in Chicago, M., St. P. & P. R. Co. v. Linehan, 8 Cir., 1933, 66 F.2d 373, 380:
“Defendant urges that the physical facts contradict the testimony of plaintiff. It is undoubtedly the law that, if the physical facts positively contradict the testimony of a witness, that testimony is not to be credited'by a court or jury. Missouri, K. & T. R. Co. v. Collier, 8 Cir., 157 F. 347; American Car & Foundry Co. v. Kindermann, 8 Cir., 216 F. 499; F. W. Woolworth Co. v. Davis, 10 Cir., 41 F.2d 342.
“Evidence which cannot possibly be true is not substantial evidence.”
The opinion in Chambers v. Skelly Oil Co., 10 Cir., 1937, 87 F.2d 853, 856, contains the following:
“The rule is likewise settled that ‘when the testimony of a witness is positively contradicted by the physical facts, neither the court nor the jury can be permitted to credit it.’ F. W. Woolworth Co. v. Davis, supra, 10 Cir., 41 F.2d 342, at page 347; American Car & Foundry Co. v. Kindermann, 8 Cir., 216 F. 499, 502; Missouri, K. & T. R. Co. v. Collier, 8 Cir., 157 F. 347, 353; Blackley v. Powell, 4 Cir., 68 F.2d 457, 459; Chicago, M., St. P. & P. R. Co. v. Linehan, 8 Cir., 66 F.2d 373, 380; Storey v. United States, 10 Cir., 60 F.2d 484, 486; Larabee Flour Mills Co. v. Carignano, 10 Cir., 49 F.2d 151, 153.”
This generally accepted principle is followed also in the state courts. A clear exposition of the rule by an eminent judge is found in Coney Island Co., Inc., v. Brown, 1942, 290 Ky. 750, 162 S.W.2d 785, 787-788:
“It is, to be sure, ordinarily the function of a jury'to determine the weight and effectiveness of the evidence. But this acceptation of the power or prerogative of the jury is subject to the quite universal quálification that the' jury may not, through sympathy or' other reason, arbitrarily or capriciously base its verdict upon a statement as to what occurred or how something happened when it is opposed to the laws of nature or is clearly in conflict with the scientific principles, or base its verdict upon testimony that is so incredible and improbable and contrary to common' observation and experience as to be manifestly without probative value. 20 Am.Jur., Evidence, Sections 1183; 1184; Jones, Commentaries on Evidence, Section 461; Moore' on Facts, Section 149 et seq; Annotations, 8 A.L.R. 796; 21 A.L.R. 141. We have recognized the rule in many cases and applied it in a number involving various kinds of incredible stories. See Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company v. Chambers, 165 Ky. 703, 178 S.W. 1041, Ann.Cas. 1917B, 471; Louisville Water Company v. Lally, 168 Ky. 348, 182 S.W. 186, L.R.A., 1916D, 300; Illinois Central Railroad Company v. Finchs’ Adm’r, 178 Ky. 229, 198 S.W. 734; Hauser v. Public Service Company of Indiana, 271 Ky. 206, 111 S.W.2d 657. In some of the decisions we held that the testimony was so contradictory as not to constitute a scintilla of evidence and, therefore, not to have authorized a submission of the case to the jury, and in others that the verdicts were flagrantly against the evidence requiring reversal for another trial. Under the present practice, where the latter conclusion is now reached, the former rule is to be observed, for we now hold that a mere scintilla of evidence is not sufficient to take a case to the jury.
“Quite close to the foregoing rule as to contradiction of the physical laws is another which may well be applied here. It is that if the admitted physical facts, whether *61corroborated by testimony of those who saw the accident or not, are so contradictory of the testimony of other witnesses as to how or where an accident occurred, a verdict based upon that testimony will be deemed by this court to be flagrantly against the evidence. Cumberland Railroad Company v. Girdner, 174 Ky. 761, 192 S.W. 873; Cochran’s Adm’rs v. Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company, 232 Ky. 107, 22 S.W.2d 452; C. L. & L. Motor Express Company v. Achenbach, 259 Ky. 228, 82 S.W.2d 335; Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company v. Welsh, 272 Ky. 120, 113 S.W.2d 879; Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company v. Lefevers’ Adm’x, 272 Ky. 152, 113 S.W.2d 1136; Lambert v. Miller’s Administrator, 277 Ky. 64, 125 S.W.2d 1019. * * *
“We would not be understood as imputing perjury to the plaintiff and her witnesses. We think their testimony is based upon a theory, and that the theory is destroyed by the physical facts and the unchangeable law of nature. We may close the opinion with the following extract from Spiro v. St. Louis Transit Company, 102 Mo.App. 250, 76 S.W. 684, 688, quoted in Moore on Facts, Section 154: ‘Verdicts resting on evidence which looks contrary to the ordinary course of nature are not infrequently set aside, and retrials directed, by appellate courts, as a proper precaution against an unjust outcome of litigation. * * * This prerogative of courts of error is sparingly employed, but that it exists, as an emergency expedient, for the correction of verdicts palpably wrong, is certain. The appropriate use of it does not require a court to be convinced that the jury found an event to have occurred that was physically impossible or miraculous. It is enough if the event found was so improbable, according to the ordinary operation of physical forces, or was so overwhelmingly disproved by credible witnesses, as to compel the conviction that the jury either failed to weigh the evidence carefully, or drew unwarranted inferences, or yielded to a partisan bias.’ ”
It is plain that McKinney’s negligence was the sole cause of the accident. His testimony concerning the condition and construction of the crossing was grossly false, and his theory of how the accident happened, formed only on his Monday visit to the scene, was contrary to common experience. In my view the jury’s verdict is a completely unwarranted taking of the railroad company’s money.

 “Q. Had you stopped and looked and listened before you went on the tracks?
A. No, sir, I didn’t stop and look.”

 The following excerpts' from McKinney’s testimony support the resumé which I have given. These questions and answers- are taken from various portions of the transcript but are placed in continuity here solely for convenience.
“Q. What happened when you reached the rails? A. When I reached the rails, there was gravel in betwixt the rail and my left wheel slipped and caught on the rail. My left front wheel caught on the rail and I couldn’t cross it.
“Q. Will you tell us again how you happened to get off the crossing and between the rails? A. There was gravel in twixt the rails, and when I got in twixt the rail, my front wheel slipped in the gravel and caught on the rail.
“Q. How wide is this crossing? A. Just wide enough for one ear to cross.
“Q. Was there anything between the rails on either side of the crossing? A.
On either side of the crossing, I think there was some wood, on the outside of the rail and gravel on the inside, twixt the two rails.
‘ÍQ. Did your left front wheel skid on the gravel? A. Yes, sir.
“Q. It did skid on the gravel? A. Yes, sir.
“Q. What speed were you going when you got on the crossing? A. I would say about 10 miles an hour.
“Q. What gear were you in? A. I was in second gear.
“Q. * * * Did you see the railroad sign when you pulled up to this crossing? A. Yes, sir, I seen the sign, yes, sir.
“Q. You saw it that night? A. Yes, sir.
“Q. Had you stopped and looked and listened before you went on the tracks?
A. No, sir,.I didn’t stop and look.
"Q. When is the next time you went back to that crossing? A. I went back the next Monday evening following that Sunday morning. I goes back Monday.
“Q. What did you go back for? A. I goes back to find the pocketbooks they had lost.
“Q. While you were there did you examine the crossing again? A. I just looked to see why my wheel caught on the rail.
‘‘Q. What did you see? A. The gravel was in twixt the rail. My wheels slipped in them and that made them catch on the rail and I couldn’t cross.
“Q. Why do you think your wheels slipped? A. Well, I wouldn’t know; on account of the gravel bed there and it just slipped off and caught on the rail.
“Q. Was this gravel just piled into this space loosely? A. Yes, sir.
“Q. Or was there anything in there to hold it together? A. It was just piled in there loose.
“Q. The day you were out there looking, was there any wood plank on the ends? A. There wasn’t no wood planks on the end, twixt the rails.
“Q. * * * When did it first become dear to you that the reason why you missed this crossing was the fact that your car skidded on this gravel that was built up between the rails? A. Yes, sir. You mean when I knowed what happened? The reason I got hung on the rail?
“Q. That is right. A. It was the next day after I went back and looked.
“Q. What sort of shape were your lights? A. They were in good shape, all was burning; in good shape. They had been through the inspection.
“Q. You had a pretty good view, then, of this- crossing when you drove up to. it? A. Yes, I could see it.
*59“Q. You could see the crossing perfectly veil as you came up there? A. Yes, sir.
“Q. * * * Is that crossing any narrower than the road out there? A. Yes, sir.
“Q. How much? A. Two cars can pass on the road.
“Q. And in your best recollection, that crossing is only 8 feet wide? Is that a a fair statement of your view? A. Yes, sir.”