Court Opinion

ID: 9828434
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 18:22:06.526549+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:48.055263
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
In a very able motion for rehearing, appel-lee advances the following propositions:
(a) The contract was admissible for certain specific purposes, and an objection that does not point out the particular “portions or paragraphs of the contract which were inadmissible” does not show error.
(b) Appellant offered evidence to the same effect as the written contract which was received without objection.
(c) It was a disputed material issue as to *868who owned the 300 feet of tract provided for in the written contract.
(d) The court did not give due weight to all the evidence in the record.
(e) Appellant’s injury was caused by an independent act of negligence on the part of the Martin Wagon Company, thereby excluding the negligent’ construction of the dolly-way, and the issue of whether the accident was caused by the box car with bulged sides as proximate causes of appellant’s injury.
(f) The finding on the issue of assumed risk was fully supported as an independent defense, unaffected by the reception of the contract as evidence.
(g) Appellant’s assignments of error and propositions are insufficient to show reversible error, in that construed in the light of the record they, do not affirmatively show error in the reception of the written contract.'
As appears from our original opinion, appellee did not brief this ease. The propositions now advanced could be reviewed only by granting a rehearing and giving appellee permission to advance these propositions as counter propositions against appellant’s theory of the case. ‘ Under the rules we have no authority to grant appellee that relief. In the absence of its brief, the rules require that we dispose of the case on the theory advanced by appellant.
Appellee criticizes as being contrary to the undisputed evidence and without any support in the record our conclusion:
“The facts were that; while appellant was standing on a dollyway near an industrial switch constructed for the use and benefit of the Martin Wagon Company, the dollyway.was hit by a box car with bulging sides, tearing it down and severely injuring appellant.”
This issue was pleaded by appellant, and has support in the following evidence:
“I never noticed that bulged car. I don’t know how close that car passed to the other, three loading docks; I say I was not looking at it; I had my back to it. As to whether I do know that it passed the other three loading racks, I will state that some portion of that car struck some portion of that platform; I can’t tell you what it was. I don’t know whether that car struck the west end or the north end. • * * If that skidway had been back 12 or 15 or 18 inches further west that bulged car would not have ,hit it. If it had been built further, and had not been so close, as to whether that bulged car would have passed it, I will state that it would if it had been far enough away from it; if it had been built 18 or 20 inches back further there would have been plenty of room for the bulged car to have -passed. As to whether, if those planks had not been sticking out there too far and if they had been further back, the bulged car would not have struck them, I will state that I don’t know but that they were back there.”
W. J. McGee testified:
“I saw what caused him to fall. -1 saw that skidway moved that caused him to fall. The car they were setting in there struck the skidway or edge of the plank one. This car was bulged on the side. That car must have been bulged 12 or 15,inches out of line. It was a coal car; that is, the car that is built with sides like a box.”
Appellee says that the contract was not an effort on its part to delegate to the Martin Wagon Company the duty to furnish appellant a reasonably safe place to work. The contract provided that the Martin Wagon Company should build and maintain a spur track, dollyway, etc., and made it liable to appellee for a breach of those conditions. It was contemplated by the contract that appellee’s servants were to use its spur track. Appellee pleaded:
“The defendant railway company further alleges that plaintiff’s injuries, if any, were the direct and proximate result of the construction of the loading rack used by its codefendant in too close proximity to defendant’s- track, * * * but that said negligence, if any, did not constitute or become the proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries chargeable to or attributable to the defendant railway company, the said loading rack having been constructed and maintained by the defendant-Martin Wagon Company.”
As we construe appellee’s plea, it constitutes a direct allegation that it had contracted against liability and was urging that contract as a defense against appellant’s cause of action. It is no answer to this contention to say, as appellee does in its motion for rehearing, that, as between it and the Martin Wagon Company the contract was legal, and that it had a right, in such contract, to insist upon indemnity from the Martin Wagon Company for a breach by it of the contractual obligations. The contract between the parties thereto was perfectly legal, but, as between appellant and appellee, was ex parte and constituted an effort on the part of ap-pellee, as it directly pleaded, to relieve itself by contract of its common-law duty to furnish its servants a reasonably safe place to work.
The motion for rehearing and the additional motion to strike out appellant’s assignments of error and propositions are overruled.