Court Opinion

ID: 9539769
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:09:51.300322+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:59:19.402277
License: Public Domain

CROCKETT, Justice
(dissenting).
Believing that the trial court correctly •determined that a jury question existed as to the defendant’s negligence, I am constrained to disagree with the conclusion of .the majority opinion.
I am quite in accord with the thought •often expressed that the railroad is not an insurer of the safety of its employees, and that it is not required to eliminate all danger in the work. The very nature of railroading makes any such requirement impractical. Yet it is fundamental that the railroad does have the duty to exercise reasonable care to provide not only a safe place, but also safe means, for its employees to work, and to eliminate all dangers which reasonable prudence and caution would foresee and guard against. If the circumstances are such that reasonable men might differ as to whether dangers exist with respect to which reasonable care would have required additional precautions, that very difference of opinion makes the question of negligence one for the jury.
The opinion quotes from the plaintiff’s testimony that he “reached up for the wire and all at once it sprung and came like lightning and I dropped the wire * * * when I dropped the wire it sprung that much more.” The plaintiff’s claim was that the piece of wire, 12 to 15 feet long, rolled into a coil 8 to 10 inches in diameter, with the ends turned into the coil so they were held under tension and thus likely to flip out when the tension was released, constituted a hazard to his safety; and that when the tension was released, the loose ends did flip out resulting in the injury to his eye. It is not questioned that it was a continuing practice for the employees to thus keep and use wire in connection with their work. Undoubtedly further precautions could have been taken to remove or reduce any hazard of the type claimed by the plaintiff. For a statement as to submission of the question of negligence to a jury when further precautions may have been taken, see Boston & M. R. R. v. Meech, 1 Cir., 1946, 156 F.2d 109.
I have heretofore stated my views in regard to the desirability of giving more than lip service to the right of trial by jury and the virtue of exercising judicial restraint from the temptation to interfere therewith because we may not agree with the verdict. Stickle v. Union Pac. R. Co., 122 Utah 477, 479, 251 P.2d 867, 871. I suppose that all judges, certainly including the writer, occasionally bewail what appear to be the vagaries and inconsistencies of *188juries. But so long as the verdict rendered finds support in the evidence and is not beyond the pale of reason, for a court to nullify the verdict is to encroach upon the jury’s prerogatives and to that extent to impair the system. To operate as it is supposed to do, trial by jury must entail something more than giving the jury the privilege of guessing what the court thinks, and if they guess right the verdict is valid and if they guess wrong it is set aside.
Cases decided by the United States Supreme Court have consistently gone to great lengths in holding that an employee injured in his employment is entitled to have a jury pass on his case whenever there is any basis whatever in the evidence upon which reasonable minds could conclude that there was negligence on the part of the railroad which caused or contributed toward his injury. See Wilkerson v. McCarthy, 1949, 336 U.S. 53, 69 S.Ct. 413, 93 L.Ed 497. As stated in Rogers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 1957, 352 U.S. 500, 77 S.Ct. 443, 1 L.Ed.2d 493 it does not matter that, from the evidence, the jury may also with reason, on grounds of probability, attribute the result to some other cause, including the employee’s contributory negligence.
It is not to be questioned that on appeal it is the responsibility of this court to make an objective analysis of the question under discussion. But in case of doubt or uncertainty, it seems to me entirely proper to give some consideration to these facts: The-trial judge had the issue before him and decided the question to be one for the jury and submitted it to them. The jury, presumably comprised of reasonable persons,, found from the evidence that the railroad was negligent. Thereafter upon a motion for a new trial the judge was again confronted with the question and denied the motion. As stated in Geary v. Cain, 1927, 69 Utah 340, 255 P. 416, 423:
“ * * * in case of doubt, the deliberate action of the trial court should prevail. Otherwise this court will sooner or later find itself usurping the functions of both the jury and the trial court, in violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution.”
Based upon the foregoing considerations', it appears to me that the evidence and the-reasonable inferences that could be drawn therefrom are such that fair-minded men might differ as to whether the railroad was guilty of negligence which contributed to-cause the plaintiff’s injury.
Although I agree that it was not necessary to do so, I do not think it was prejudicial error for the court to instruct that the plaintiff did not assume the risks in his employment. See my concurring opinion in Moore v. Denver & R. G. W. R. Co., footnote seven of main opinion. It is therefore my conclusion that the verdict and the judgment should be affirmed.