Court Opinion

ID: 9807746
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:14:48.753757+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:53:05.621287
License: Public Domain

Montgomery, J.,
dissenting. The plaintiff brought this action to recover damages for the killing of his intestate through the alleged negligence of the defendant company. In the complaint it is alleged that the defendant is a domestic railroad corporation in North Carolina, and that the line of-its road extends through Blacksburg, South Carolina, through Cleveland and Rutherford counties in North Carolina, to Marion, North Carolina; that his intestate at the time of his death was employed by the defendant as a locomotive engineer and was engaged in running an engine pulling a train from Blacksburg, S. 0., to Marion, N. 0.; that the defendant, in the exericse of due care, undertook to cross a high trestle over Buffalo Creek in South Carolina between Blacksburg and the North Carolina line and was killed by the falling in of part of the trestle, the trestle having been insecurely built and then in a bad condition to the defendant’s knowledge. The allegation of the complaint is that the trestle over Buffalo Creek where the intestate lost his life is in South Carolina, and all of the evidence was to the effect that it was on the railroad track of the company organized and chartered in South Carolina as the “South Carolina and Georgia Extension Railroad Company of South Carolina.” The act of incorporation of the defendant company, passed on the first day of February, 1900, chapter 35 of the acts of the General Assembly of 1899, shows that the defendant corporation was authorized to operate and maintain a railroad from the State line between the States of North Carolina and South Carolina, on the county line of Cleveland County, to the town of Marion in the State of North Carolina, and thence to the Tennessee State line.
*618It was admitted by both sides on the trial, and the admission was correct in law, that there is a presumption of law, in the absence of proof, where a corporation has authority to operate a railroad and the road is being operated, that the company authorized by. the charter is in fact conducting its management, and the Court so instructed the jury. The plaintiff’s intestate, then, having been killed in South Carolina on the road of the South Carolina and Georgia Railroad Company of South Carolina there is a presumption of the law that that company was operating its own road.
The defendant at the close of all the evidence renewed its motion to nonsuit the plaintiff upon the ground that the plaintiff had failed to show that the defendant company, the South Carolina and Georgia Extension Railroad Company of North Carolina, ran its train, built, or was in law required to maintain the trestle spanning Buffalo Creek in South Carolina, or that the lolaintiff’s intestate was employed by the defendant company. We think that the motion should have been allowed.
The first issue was as follows: “Was the plaintiff’s intestate, Jake Metcalf, employed and sent by the defendant, on April 20, 1901, as engineer for the purpose of running an engine and cars attached from Blacksburg, South Carolina, to Marion, North Carolina, over Buffalo Creek trestle, as alleged in the complaint?”
After a careful scrutiny of all the evidence in this case, I find none to the effect that the intestate was either employed by the defendant company or that he was under its direction or orders on the 20th April, 1901 — the day of his death. The only evidence offered by the plaintiff to prove that fact positively was the testimony of Mrs. Corrie Metcalf, the widow of the intestate. In her examination-in-chief she said that the intestate’s “run” was from Blacksburg to Marion and return; that he had been working for the same company *619all tbe time be was on that “run,” and that the road on which he, as engineer, hauled trains was in North Carolina from Marion along the line of what was known as the “Three 0 road.” On her cross-examination, however, she said that the name of the company that runs to Marion is the same as that company that runs to Camden, and that, of her own knowledge, she did not know what that name was — she only knew that their literature (referring to order book and the checks in which the intestate received his monthly wages) said it was. The checks and order book were shown in evidence. The checks were drawn at Blacksburg, S. 0., by A Tripp, superintendent, and at the top of it was printed “South Carolina and Georgia Extension Railroad Company. Pay Roll No. 2.”
The order book which was delivered to the intestate contained, as prefatory to the rules, the following printed statement: “No. 555. This book is the property of the South Carolina and Georgia Extension Railroad Company and is loaned to J. D. Metcalf, engineer, who hereby agrees to return it to the proper officer when called for, or upon leaving the service.” He signed it. The evidence of that witness did not tend to show that the intestate was employed by the defendant company.
E. E. Dougherty, a witness for the defendant, on the other hand testified that at the time of the intestate’s death he was train dispatcher of the South Carolina and Georgia Extension Railroad Company, and that the intestate on the day of his death was sent out by him from Blacksburg to Marion in charge of an engine and train; that he had never been employed or paid by the defendant company. There was a contention on the part of the plaintiff, both in this Court and in the Court below, that the defendant company and the South Carolina and Georgia Extension Railroad of South Carolina were either partners or joint operators of *620the two corporations, using the name of the South Carolina and Georgia Extension Railroad Company as the name under which they operated their partnership or joint interest business; and his Honor submitted that view to the jury upon the following instruction: “The charter of the defendant company, ratified on February 1, 1899, Acts 1899, page 129, provides that it may consolidate with any other company in this State or any other State, and it provides further how such consolidation shall be effected, and that the consolidated company shall be a legal corporation when certain papers mentioned in the charter should be filed with the Secretary of State. If the jury find from the evidence that these two corporations were doing business over the line of road in North Carolina and South Carolina under the name of South Carolina and Georgia Extension Railroad Company, and there was no such corporation as this last named concern, but that it was a combination of the two corporations operated under a common set of officers and from a common treasury, then the South Carolina Georgia Extension Railroad Company of North Carolina would be liable for torts as a joint operator of the property under the name and style of the South Carolina and Georgia Extension Railroad Company.”
The evidence on which that contention was submitted to the jury was that trains of cars ran daily from Blacksburg to Marion and returned; the testimony of Dougherty, who said that he was the train dispatcher of the South Carolina and Georgia Extension Railroad Company; that A. Tripp was the superintendent of the same road; that Nutting was supervisor of bridges and building; that Maxwell was supervisor of roadway; that they all lived in Blacksburg, S. C.; that the South Carolina and Georgia Extension Railroad Company ran from Marion to Camden, and that he did not know of any different company that ran from Marion to *621Blacksburg. Tbe fact, too, that the act of Assembly incorporating the defendant company in North Carolina, and that of the South Carolina Legislature incorporating the South Carolina and Georgia Extension Railroad Company of South Carolina, with the same corporators in both, authorized each of the companies to lease, or lease to, or consolidate with, any other railroad company, and the fact that no such lease or consolidation had been made or effected, were relied upon to give color and force to the contention that, instead of a consolidation between the two companies, they had agreed upon a joint management of the business of the two roads and a division of the profits.
I cannot see how that evidence tends to prove the contention. If there had been no consolidation in law of the two companies, and there is no evidence that there had been, and the name of the South Carolina and Georgia Extension Railroad Company is a myth, the evidence tends rather to show that the South Carolina and Georgia Extension Railroad Company of South Carolina is the real power which is operating the defendant road, for the officers who control it live in South Carolina on its line of railway, and its trains start from Blacksburg and return the same day, and the defendant company has no cars or engines. To me it seems that the defendant company has no part in the actual management of its road, and if it is interested in the profits there is no evidence of it.
I think there ought to be a new trial.