Court Opinion

ID: 8754127
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 11:38:57.411823+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:01:08.466871
License: Public Domain

THAYER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting). The defendants below, who are the plaintiffs in error in this court, requested the trial court to give four instructions on the subject of contributory negligence, all of which were refused, and the sole question before this court is whether a reversible error was committed in refusing these instructions, or any of them. The first of the four instructions was as follows:
“Ttie evidence shows that at the time of hearing the warning, and until he was killed, Morrison was not in the boat, but was walking on the bank; that he was a passenger, and under no obligation to look out for the safety of the boat or its contents; and you are instructed that when he heard the alarm it was his duty to proceed down the bank in search -for a place of safety, and that, if he did not do so, he was guilty of contributory negligence which precludes of recovery in this case.”
The second and third instructions embodied the same idea, namely, that if Morrison heard the alarm of fire while walking along the bank and poling the ferryboat offshore, and made no effort to get out of danger after he heard the alarm, he was guilty of contributory negligence.
The fourth instruction was a mere abstract proposition of law, to the following effect:
“The court, in this connection, instructs you that it was the duty of the decedent, Morrison, when he was made aware of the fact that a blast was to •be fired, to use reasonable diligence to get out of danger.”
I have not been able to conclude that the refusal of either of these instructions constitutes a reversible error. The first three of these instructions were palpably wrong and misleading, in that they ignored material facts which the testimony for the plaintiff below strongly tend*185ed to establish. This testimony was to the effect that no warning of the blast which was about to be fired was given until the ferryboat had started on its voyage across the river, and had proceeded upstream from 150 to 300 yards above the landing; that, when the alarm of fire was given, the captain of the ferryboat immediately hallooed back as loud as he could, two or three times, not to fire until the boat got away, or “Don’t shoot until we get away,” and that the reply immediately came back from some person in the vicinity of the blast, “All right.” In other words, the testimony for the plaintiff below showed that the persons on the ferryboat and alongside of it, including the deceased, were led to believe, by the reply “All right,” which was made to the captain’s exclamation “Don’t shoot,” that the firing of the blast would be deferred until the boat had got out of danger. Obviously, then, if such was the fact, and the jury had so found, as.they might well have done, under the testimony, it could not be said that the deceased was guilty of contributory negligence, as these instructions declared, because he did not drop his pole and search for a place of safety immediately after the alarm of fire was given. The first three instructions that were asked on the subject of contributory negligence'wholly ignored this phase of the testimony, and the trial court properly refused these requests for that reason.
The fourth instruction, above quoted, stated merely an abstract proposition of law, giving the jury no precise direction as to what the deceased’s conduct should have been on the occasion in question. If the deceased heard the alarm of fire, and also heard the captain’s exclamation “Don’t shoot,” and the response “All right,” and understood from such response, as he probably did, that the blast would not be fired until the boat was out of danger, no one can say that he did not exercise reasonable diligence in acting as he did. On the other hand, if he did not hear such response, and was not given to understand that the blast would not be fired, the exercise of reasonable diligence might, in the estimation of the jury, have required him to act differently than he did. The fault with this instruction, in my judgment, was that it was too general in its terms, not adapted to the different phases of the testimony, and was not calculated to give the jury any information concerning their duty in the premises. Instructions ought always to be adapted to the various hypotheses of fact which may be found by a jury, and a judgment ought not to be reversed because the trial court fails to give an instruction, as respects some abstract rule of law, however accurate it may be, which is not calculated to aid the jury in reaching a correct conclusion. There is abundant evidence in the record to support the conclusion that the plaintiffs in error were guilty of negligence. Indeed, I do not understand that fact to be challenged by the majority opinion. The testimony shows that the blasts which they were in the habit of firing from this cut were very heavy. When fired they showered the surrounding country with rock, and put the lives of every one who was within the vicinity in peril. It was shown that only a day or two previous to the accident in question a blast had been fired which threw a rock weighing 20 tons entirely across the river. Under these circumstances, it was the duty of the defendants below to have taken greater care than they appear to *186have taken to ascertain, before firing a blast, whether all persons within the danger line had been duly notified of the expected explosion, and were in a place of safety, or had been given time to reach a place of safety. Certainly such blasts as the one in question ought not to be fired in proximity to a ferry landing, and near a public highway, without taking such precautions as are fully adequate to protect human life. In the present instance the area of danger was so large that if the decedent, when he first heard the warning cry, “Fire,” had dropped his pole and run in any direction, he might not have reached a place where he would have been any safer than by remaining where he was; but, conceding it to be true that it was his duty to have made some effort to reach a place of safety after he heard the warning cry of fire, yet the plaintiffs’ evidence, if credited by the jury, was of such a character as excused him from making any such effort. I think that no instruction on the subject of contributory negligence, such as was requested, ought to have been given, and that the record discloses no reversible error.