Court Opinion

ID: 9826764
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 16:34:22.935039+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:14.331754
License: Public Domain

ON PETITION TO REHEAR,.
On July 8, 1925, pursuant to an opinion of this court handed down and filed on that date, a ."judgment was entered in this cause dismissing the appeal for prematurity and remanding the case to the circuit court of Maury county. It was held in that opinion that the appeal was premature because the transcript of the record did not show that there had been a final .judgment in the court below.
On July 17, 1925, plaintiff in error Dock Cobble, administrator of Ligón Cobble, deceased, filed a petition for a rehearing and for leave to suggest a diminution of the record so as to supply the final judgment in the case which, it was alleged in the petition, had been, by inadvertence and oversight of the clerk of the circuit court, omitted from the transcript of the record filed in this court. The petition is accompanied by a duly certified transcript of a judgment of the circuit court dismissing the suit of the plaintiff below and adjudging the cost against the plaintiff. This was, of course, a final decree, and as the record here shows that plaintiff in error prayed an appeal in the nature of a writ of error to this court, and that same was granted by the circuit court and perfected by the plaintiff in error Dock Cobble, administrator etc., it is apparent that this court has jurisdiction of the appeal. If we should decline to grant the petition for a rehearing and adhere to our former judgment dismissing the appeal for prematurity, the case would be in an anomalous situation. It would be suspended somewhere between the circuit court and this court, as it now appears that the judgment of the circuit court was final and that court was divested of jurisdiction by the appeal.
The petition for a rehearing is granted, and our former judgment of July 8, 1925, is vacated and set aside. The supplemental transcript exhibited with the petition to rehear will be filed as a part of the transcript of the record in this court, and the judgment of the circuit court will be reviewed on the record.
Dock Cobble, as the administrator of the estate of his- deceased son, Ligón Cobble, sued the International Agricultural Corporation in the circuit court of Maury county to recover damages for the allegled wrongful killing of his intestate, and he obtained a verdict and judgment for $2,125, from which judgment the defendant appealed in error to the Court of Civil Appeals, where the judgment of the trial court was reversed, and the cause remanded for a new trial, on account of certain errors in the charge of the special judge who pre*362sided, at the trial. On certiorari, the Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the Court of Civil Appeals in a written opinion which is reported in 146 Tenn., 120, and the case went back to the circuit court of Maury county.
The plaintiff’s declaration originally contained two counts but the first count was eliminated on the first trial below, and upon the trial which we are now reviewing the ease was tried upon the second count alone, which count was predicated upon averments that plaintiff’s intestate died'as a result of injuries received in the course of his employment at defendant’s phosphate plant in Maury county; that plaintiff’s intestate was only fourteen years of age at the time of his employment and injuries and death, and that therefore his employment was in violation of the Child Labor Law of this state and defendant was liable in damages therefor.
At the close of plaintiff’s proof, the trial judge, on motion of defendant, peremptorily directed the jury to return a verdict in favor of the defendant, which was done, and the plaintiff’s suit was dismissed at his cost.
The sole question raised by the plaintiff’s assignments of error is that the trial judge erred in directing a verdict for the defendant and dismissing plaintiff’s suit.
It is insisted for defendant that the assignments of error filed on behalf of plaintiff do not conform to the requirements of the rules of this court and amount to no assignments of error, and, upon that ground, defendant has filed a motion to affirm the judgment of the circuit court for lack of assignments of error in this court.
While the plaintiff does not concede that his assignments of error are so far lacking in substance as to amount to no assignments of error, he has filed a motion for leave to file additional assignments of error.
The assignments of error (filed May 25, 1925), standing' alone, could not, in our opinion, be held sufficient under the rules of this court, but (on June 22, 1925) the plaintiff filed a combined brief- and argument in support of his assignments of error, and we think the two documents sufficiently specify the propositions of law and fact upon which the plaintiff is seeking a reversal of the judgment of the lower court. We therefore overrule the motion of the defendant for an affirmance of judgment on the ground of a lack of assignments of errors. 104 Tenn., 678.
We also decline to grant the application of the plaintiff in error for leave to file additional assignments of error, for the reason that the assignments already filed raise the only question available to plaintiff in error on this record. This is because of the limitations of the motion for a new trial below, which motion was based upon the following grounds, viz: (1) there is no evidence to support the *363verdict; (2) the evidence preponderates against the verdict; (3) because the court erroneously instructed the jury peremptorily to find a verdict in favor of the defendant, and (4) because of error in the court’s charge in peremptorily instructing the jury to return a verdict in favor of the defendant, over plaintiff’s exception duly made at the time.
The second assignment, supra, does not raise a question which can be considered by this court, and plaintiff has not assigned error on that ground in this court.
The first, third and fourth grounds of the motion for a new trial above stated raise, in effect, the same question. 139 Tenn., 37, 44; 142 Tenn., 678, 688.
And counsel for plaintiff in error say in their brief that there is, in fact, only one error complained of, viz: that the case was not permitted to gO' to the jury.
After an examination of the record, and of pertinent authorities, principally the opinion of the supreme court in this case reported in 146 Tenn., at p. 120 et seq., we are of the opinion that the trial judge did not err in directing a verdict for the defendant.
An extended statement of the evidence would serve no useful purpose. There is evidence supporting the cause of action stated in the declaration, and the case should have been submitted to the jury, unless the plaintiff should be repelled because he knowingly suffered his son (the deceased, Ligón Cobble) to work in defendant’s plant.
At the time of his death, Ligón Cobble had been employed by defendant in its phosphate plant for about two months. His father, the plaintiff, was also employed by defendant to work in the same plant, and had been so employed for four or five, years. Ligón was living with plaintiff, and plaintiff knew that Ligón was working for defendant in its phosphate plant.
The plaintiff testified that he did not procure the employment of Ligón by defendant, and did not misrepresent Ligón’s age to defendant. Mr. Harbison was defendant’s superintendent, and it appears that Harbison employed Ligón for defendant. Plaintiff states in his testimony that Mr. Harbison told him that he was going to work Ligón, and, plaintiff says, “I didn’t tell Mr,. Harbison to work him, and I didn’t tell him not to work him.” In other words, plaintiff, according to his own testimony, silently acquiesced in the employment of his fourteen-year-old son, and permitted him to work in defendant’s plant, where he met his death, for two months without protest or objection and without any effort to restrain his son from working for defendant.
• Plaintiff brings this suit as administrator, but alleges in his declaration that he is “the sole beneficiary in said right of action.”
*364Section six of the Child Labor Law of 1911 (ch. 57) provides that “whoever employs any child and whoever having- under his control as parent, guardian, or otherwise any child, permits or suffers such child to be employed or to work in violation of any of the provisions of this act shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction, shall be fined not less than $25 nor more than $250, in the discretion of the court.”
As before stated, Ligón was employed with the knowledge and acquiescence of plaintiff, and plaintiff was guilty of a misdemeanor, in that, he permitted and suffered his fourteen-year-old son to work in violation of the Child Labor Law, and plaintiff was therefore guilty of concurring negligence which proximately contributed to the injuries and death of his son.
It is the established rule in this state that a person whose negligence has proximately contributed to the death or injury of another cannot recover in an action for his benefit for such death or-injury. Plaintiff “should not be entitled to recover because his act was necessarily a direct, proximate, and contributing cause of his son’s death.” International Agricultural Corporation v. Cobble; 146 Tenn., 120, 127-128.
The assignments of error are overruled and the judgment of the circuit court dismissing plaintiff’s suit at his cost is affirmed.
The costs of the appeal will be adjudged against the plaintiff, Dock Cobble, administrator, etc.
Crownover and DeWitt, JJ., concur.