Court Opinion

ID: 9808559
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:42:18.366628+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:15:32.532770
License: Public Domain

BeowN, J.,
dissenting: I fully agree with the opening citation in the opinion of the Court from the Abernathy case. It is the well-settled law of this State. Applying it to the evidence of this ease, I am of opinion that the learned judge of the Superior Court did not err in sustaining the motion to nonsuit. A careful examination of the evidence set out in the record, in my opinion, fails to disclose any real evidence that the plaintiff’s intestate was lying down helpless upon defendant’s track, and while in such condition was run over and killed by a train.
The burden of proof is upon the plaintiff to prove by the clear weight of the evidence:
1. That the deceased was down on the track in an apparently helpless condition.
2. That the engineer could have discovered him in time to stop the train before reaching him, by the exercise of ordinary care.
3. That he failed to exercise such care, and as a direct result, deceased was killed. Clegg v. R. R., 132 N. C., 294; Henderson v. R. R., 159 N. C., 581; Holder v. R. R., 160 N. C., 7; Stout v. R. R., 132 N. C., 416; Ward v. R. R., 167 N. C., 148.
*744There is nothing worthy of the name of evidence that tends to prove the first of these propositions. What is offered as evidence is only the merest conjecture and surmise. Because the intestate was subject- to occasional fits of epilepsy is no evidence that on this occasion he was seized with an attack and fell helpless upon the track. The fact that his body was mangled is likewise no evidence that he was prostrate and helpless upon the track when the engine struck him. There is nothing in the evidence inconsistent with the theory that the intestate may have been walking or sitting on the track when struck by the engine, or with the theory that he may have fallen upon the track when it was too late to stop the engine.
There is evidence that the track was straight, and that the headlight of the engine could be seen at some distance, but there is no evidence that the engineer could have discovered the figure of a man prone upon the track in time to have stopped the train. What is assumed to be evidence is mere guess-work.
Me. Justice Walker concurs in the dissenting opinion.