Court Opinion

ID: 9812610
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:43:15.035315+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:25:31.697462
License: Public Domain

AlleN, J.
I concur in the opinion sustaining the judgment of non-suit.
An examination of the complaint makes it clear that the action was *594commenced upon the theory that the defendant was negligent in that it had violated an ordinance of the city of Raleigh regulating the speed of trains; but this ground of negligence had to be abandoned because there was no such ordinance in existence at the time the plaintiff was injured.
The plaintiff then undertook to prove that at the time of his injury he was walking in a cut 30 feet deep, on the track of the Seaboard Railroad, about 5 feet from the track of the defendant; that this track was used generally by the public; that the rate of speed of trains passing this point was usually 10 miles an hour ;• that the train which injured him was running 25 or 30 miles an hour, that he relied on the custom as to the speed of the train, and as the train was passing he was carried by suction under the train and injured.
I recognize the rule that it is for the jury, and not for this Court, to pass on the weight of evidence and the credibility of witnesses, but the two facts upon which this position rests: (T) that the train was running 25 or 30 miles an hour, (2) that the plaintiff was carried under the train by suction, are not only not established, except as they may he said to be included in the verdict, but the circumstances show they could not have existed.
The defendant’s train was a freight carrying forty-six loaded cars. It was at a standstill at the water tank 485 feet from the place of the injury, and it was running partly on a curve and up a heavy grade.
One witness, a young man about 20 years of age, the companion of the plaintiff, who had not noticed the speed of the train as it was approaching, and had to reach his conclusion in a moment of time, testified that the train was running 25 or 30 miles an hour; but the circumstances as to the length and weight of the train, the curve, the grade, and the distance traversed — circumstances that are not disputed — would seem to make it impossible for the train to have attained this speed.
No witness testified that the plaintiff was carried under the train by suction.
The plaintiff testified that as the train passed “It seemed like a force of wind pushed me like that and knocked me down,” and he told his brother he did not know how it happened or how he got under the train.
His companion at the time of his injury, who was walking by his side, testified that he did not feel the force of the wind as the train passed.
There was no evidence that in the history of railroading any person had been injured by the force of wind while standing 5 feet from a passing train running 25 or 30 miles an hour, and no evidence that any such injury could have been anticipated or foreseen.
It was, however, for the jury to determine the weight of the evidence, and we are confined to the single inquiry as to whether there is evi*595dence of negligence, and tbis involves the question as to whether there has been a breach of duty on the part of the defendant.
I do not think that acceleration of the speed of the train, if established, is negligence, and as there is no evidence that the injury to the plaintiff could have been anticipated by the exercise of ordinary care, the judgment of nonsuit was properly entered.
This Court said in Carter v. Lumber Co., 129 N. C., 209, which hag been frequently approved: “No act or omission, though resulting in damage, can be deemed actionable negligence unless the one responsible could, by the exercise of ordinary care under all the circumstances, have foreseen that it might result in damage to some one. A. and E. Enc. of Law, vol. 16, p. 439; Pollock on Torts, 36, 37; Shear, and Redf. on Neg., 10. There must be, before a recovery can be had in actions for negligence, a breach of duty on the part of the defendant, and the act or omission producing the breach of duty, culpable in itself, must be such as a reasonably careful man would foresee might be prodúctive of injury; and one is not liable for an injury which he could not foresee. Smith'on Neg., 24; Blythe v. Water Co., 11 Exch., 781”; and in Ramsbottom v. R. R., 138 N. C., 41, which has been approved fourteen times: “To establish actionable negligence, the question of contributory negligence being out of the ease, the plaintiff is required to show by the greater weight of the testimony, first, that there has been a failure to exercise proper care in the performance of some legal duty which the defendant owed the plaintiffs under the circumstances in which they were placed, proper care being that degree of care which a prudent man should use under like circumstances and charged with like duty; and, second, that such negligent breach of duty was the proximate cause of the injury — a cause that produced the result in continuous sequence and without which it would not have occurred, and one from which any man of ordinary prudence could have foreseen that such a result was probable under all the facts as they existed.”
The evidence for the plaintiff brings the case within the accepted definition of an accident, which is “An event from an unknown cause or an unusual and unexpected event from a known cause.” Crutchfield v. R. R., 76 N. C., 320; Raiford v. R. R., 130 N. C., 597; Overcash v. R. R., 144 N. C., 579; 1 Corpus Juris, 390.