Court Opinion

ID: 8747748
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 11:14:23.761575+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:00:46.113318
License: Public Domain

SANBORN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting). The alleged causes of action in this case were the failure of the railroad company to exercise ordinary care to properly ballast its tracks, and to inspect and *30keep the step on the bottom of the cowcatcher in repair. In regard to these subjects the court below instructed the jury in three different places in its charge that the law imposed upon the railroad company the absolute duty to furnish its employés a reasonably safe place to work, and reasonably safe machinery with which to discharge their duties. These three declarations, one of which was delivered early in the charge, one when the court had delivered about one-third of it, and the last near its close, read in this way:
(1) “What it owes to its employes is to furnish machinery in a reasonably safe condition,' and a reasonably safe place for the servant to work in the discharge of his duties. A failure to do so makes the company liable in damages for any injuries sustained by the servant while in the discharge of his duties, if the servant’s own acts or negligence do not contribute to the accident.”
(2) “Now, as to the condition of the track where the accident occurred; if the railroad company failed to keep the track in a reasonably safe condition, and by reason of that failure the plaintiff, by no negligence of his own, sustained the injury complained of, then it is liable.”
(3) “I want to state this: It is the duty of a railroad corporation, or any other employer or person, especially where there is machinery, as I told you at the start, to furnish reasonably safe appliances to its employes; otherwise it is liable.”
Here were three erroneous declarations of the law controlling the rights of the parties in this litigation. They were not trivial and inadvertent mistakes in the use of words or terms, but solemn and thoughtful declarations of the rule of law which the court clearly intended should control, and which doubtless did govern, the -jury in its deliberations. That they were erroneous, the following authorities demonstrate: Railroad Co. v. Holloway (C. C. A.) 114 Fed. 458; Railway Co. v. Jarvi, 3 C. C. A. 433, 435, 436, 53 Fed. 65, 67, 68; Gowen v. Harley, 6 C. C. A. 190, 197, 56 Fed. 973, 980; Railway Co. v. Linney, 7 C. C. A. 656, 660, 59 Fed. 45, 48; Railroad Co. v. Needham, 16 C. C. A. 457, 459, 69 Fed. 823, 825; Railroad Co. v. Johnson, 27 C. C. A. 367, 368, 81 Fed. 679, 680; Railroad Co. v. Myers, 11 C. C. A. 439, 63 Fed. 793; Id., 22 C. C. A. 269, 76 Fed. 443. The presumption is that error produces prejudice. It is only when it appears so clear as to be beyond doubt that the error challenged did not prejudice, and could not have prejudiced, the complaining party, that the rule that error without prejudice is no ground for reversal is applicable. Railroad Co. v. Holloway (C. C. A.) 114 Fed. 458; Association v. Shryock, 20 C. C. A. 3, 11, 73 Fed. 774, 781; Railroad Co. v. McClurg, 8 C. C. A. 322, 325, 326, 59 Fed. 860, 863; Deery v. Cray, 5 Wall. 795, 807, 808, 18 L. Ed. 653; Smith v. Shoemaker, 17 Wall. 630, 639, 21 L. Ed. 717; Moores v. Bank, 104 U. S. 625, 630, 26 L. Ed. 870; Gilmer v. Higley, 110 U. S. 47, 50, 3 Sup. Ct. 471, 28 R. Ed. 62; Railroad Co. v. O’Brien, 119 U. S. 99, 103, 7 Sup. Ct. 118, 30 L. Ed. 299; Mexia v. Oliver, 148 U. S. 664, 673, 13 Sup. Ct. 754, 37 L. Ed. 602; Railroad Co. v. O’Reilly, 158 U. S. 334, 337, 15 Sup. Ct. 830, 39 L. Ed. 1006; Peck v. Heurich, 167 U. S. 624, 629, 17 Sup. Ct. 927, 42 L. Ed. 302.
It is true that, while the court gave the erroneous rule of law to the jury three times at three different places in its charge, it also gave *31the true rule once. But this neither extracted the error, nor proved that this error could not have prejudiced the railroad company. The presumption, as we have seen, is that this error of law did produce prejudice, unless the contrary clearly appears beyond doubt. It cannot so appear, either beyond doubt or by a preponderance of evidence, where the court repeats the error twice, and gives the true rule but once. Where two contradictory rules are given to the jury by the charge of the court for their guidance in determining the crucial issues of a controversy, as in the case at bar, it is impossible for an appellate court to ascertain or to know by which the jury were governed in their decision of the issues, and the presumption that error produces prejudice must prevail. The vice of a wrong rule is not extracted by giving a right rule, because it is impossible to tell which influenced the jury. Railway Co. v. Needham, 3 C. C. A. 129, 147, 52 Fed. 371, 377; Railroad Co. v. Farr, 6 C. C. A. 211, 216, 217, 56 Fed. 994, 1000.
There was another error in the charge. It consisted in the instruction that the negligence of the plaintiff was a bar to his recovery if that negligence contributed in any considerable degree to his injury, when the law was that it constituted a bar if it contributed in any degree. On account of these palpable errors in the charge of the court, the judgment below should be reversed, and a new trial should be directed.