Court Opinion

ID: 9834493
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 23:38:19.169328+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:16.507195
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
The appellee emphasizes the point that his conduct in operating the engine must be viewed from his standpoint of receiving at the same time a batch of train orders. And the contention is then made that there was error in the holding by this court to the effect that, if the appellee actually received train order No. 14 from the conductor, and failed to observe the order, and the failure to observe the same and wait at Camp’s Switch until 5:15 o’clock a. m. was the immediate and direct cause of the collision, then the appellee would be precluded from any recovery. The insistence now is that, if the appellee actually received train order No. 14, and was confused and misled by the conflict in order No. 8, the clearance card, and the absence of the caution card, he would not be guilty of negligence per se, but then it becomes a question of contributory negligence. It may be that an ordinarily prudent person might have drawn one conclusion as to what the orders meant, or he might readily have been misled into drawing a different conclusion. But the converse of the proposition made is also correct, that, if the appellee actually received train order No. 14, and was not confused and misled by the conflict in the other orders, then in failing to observe order No. 14 he would be precluded from recovering, if such failure was the proximate cause of the collision. And it was entirely upon this latter rule that we concluded, in view of appellee’s own evidence, that the charge in question was erroneous as not authorizing the jury to consider that particular phase of the case as made by the evidence in the light of the law applicable thereto. The ap-pellee did not claim that he was confused and misled by the conflict in the orders, considered together. lie claimed that he never received or knew of train order No. 14, and in operating the train relied entirely on order No. 8 and the information in the clearance card that “the block” was “clear.” He testified, in particular, that if he had received order No. 14 he would have obeyed it and stopped at Camp’s Switch until 5:15 o’clock a. m., even though the clearance card showed the “block clear,” and even though and notwithstanding order No. 14 was on form 19, and “no matter on what color of paper it was written.”
The motion is overruled.