Court Opinion

ID: 8753779
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 11:37:29.277618+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:01:07.204428
License: Public Domain

THAYER, Circuit Judge.
I concur in the order affirming the judgment below. I am not prepared to say that the plaintiff was guilty of negligence because he did not try to lift the coupling pin by the lever on the opposite or west side of the train before stepping in between the tracks. In view of the situation, it is most likely that he could not conveniently go around to the west side of the train to reach the lever on that side, and that it would have occasioned considerable delay had he done so. For these reasons I am not willing to hold that it was his duty to have gone around to the west side of the train. I do agree to the proposition, however, that, where there are two means of doing a given act, by one of which the act may be done with comparative safety, while the other means of doing the act are dangerous, it is the servant’s duty to choose the safer way, unless he is forced to choose the other by stress of circuinstan-i ces. In the present case there was no defect, so far as appears, in the appliance for raising, the coupling pin by the use of the lever on the east side of the car. The reason why the pin could not be moved by -that lever when the plaintiff made the attempt was doubtless due to the fact that there was at the time no slack. If the plaintiff had waited for a favorable opportunity he could doubtless have lifted the pin by the use of that lever. He did not do so, but voluntarily placed liiniself in a position of great danger by stepping in between the rails. I think that the act of Congress, which w&s passed for the protection of brakemen, amounts to a legislative .declaration that a brakeman ought not to step in between the rails to uncouple a car in a moving train; and when it appears that a brakeman has placed' himself in such a situation unnecessarily, not being compelled to do so by stress of circumstances, and receives an injury, he is guilty of such negligence as prevents a recovery. The testimony in the qase at bar, as f view it,‘ shows that the plaintiff stepped in between the rails when the train was moving, without adequate excuse for so doing, and that this act on his part beyond controversy immediately contributed to his injury, and the court below properly instructed the jury that he could not recover.