Court Opinion

ID: 9883486
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 01:43:38.841087+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:23.841373
License: Public Domain

Stukes, Justice
(dissenting).
*203I am not convinced that the long-settled law of South Carolina on this subject should be overturned. Nor do I think that the case of Western & Atlantic R. R. v. Henderson et al., 279 U. S. 639, 49 S. Ct. 445, 73 L. Ed. 884, requires it. There involved was the conduct of a responsible human being, not a dumb animal.
The distinction was pointed out in Wilson v. Southern Ry., 93 S. C. 17, 75 S. E. 1014, 1016, where an animal was referred to as “a brute which has no guide but mere instinct”; and again in Moorer v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 103 S. C. 280, 88 S. E. 15, 16, in which it was said by Mr. Justice Gage who spoke for the court: “The horse, the cow, and the mule are incapable of care; there is no duty on them to stop and look and listen; their way of escape might turn out to be the way of peril; like dead men, they tell no tales.”
It is interesting to note that the Henderson case, supra, was not followed by the Supreme Court in Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. Ford, 287 U. S. 502, 53 S. Ct. 249, 77 L. Ed. 457, which affirmed Ford v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 169 S. C. 41, 168 S. E. 143, and upheld our railroad crossing statute as applied by this court.