Court Opinion

ID: 9826190
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 15:30:44.777205+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:09.548403
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Woods.
I agree that the judgment in this case should be affirmed, but I am unable to concur in all the reasoning of Mr. Justice Fraser.
The pleadings indicating the issues are set out in his opinion. The plaintiff having testified that the day after the wreck the conductor of the train came to him with a paper which he requested the plaintiff to sign, and that he refused to read or sign it, over the objection of the defendant, this question and answer were admitted.
“Where did Capt. Tittle tell you the next day that the train went that night ? He said it went to Gray Court from Owens and the second trip it came from there to Taurens, carrying some live stock and negroes, leaving the white folks up in the woods. Now that is the way he did.”
3 There was no evidence that the conductor was authorized to settle plaintiff’s claim or even that he knew there was a claim. The alleged statement was made a day after the wreck, and, therefore, was not a part of the res gestae. Under such circumstances the testimony was clearly incompetent, unless all the authorities on the subject are to be overruled. Petrie v. Columbia & Greenville R. R. Co., 27 S. C. 63; Garrick v. Florida Central & Peninsular R. R. Co., 53 S. C. 448; Mars v. Virginia Home Insurance Co., 17 S. C. 514; Vicksburg & Meridian R. R. Co. v. O’Brien, 119 U. S. 99, 30 L. Ed. 299. Author*168ity of an agent to ascertain merely the existence or nature of a claim implies no authority to adjust the claim or to make admissions binding on the principal. I think, however, that tl’je error admitting this testimony should not work a reversal, because the conductor in his testimony, while denying that he made the statement attributed to him by the plaintiff, practically admitted and explained the acts embraced in the alleged statement. He testified that he did attach his engine and tender to a car at Gray’s Court, on which there were some negroes and live stock, and did take the car into Laurens, leaving the passengers in the woods where the wreck occurred. This testimony was given by the conductor with the explanation that he was forbidden to carry passengers on an engine, and that he merely took up the box car on his way to Laurens to get a shanty car and return for his passengers. Under these circumstances the testimony of Nelson as to the conductor’s statements to him, though incompetent, was harmless.
4 The sixth exception complains of error in the following instruction given in connection with plaintiff’s third request: “I charge you that. Now, that means this, gentlemen of the jury, that where a passenger is on a railroad train and gets hurt, and it is shown that he is hurt on the railroad train, then the presumption is that it was done through the negligence of the railroad company, but when the railroad company shows that it was not through its negligence, but something that it couldn’t help, not held under the law as being negligence, then that presumption of negligence gives way, done away with.” This language must be taken in connection with the request itself, which had explicity limited the presumption of negligence from the fact of injury on a railroad train to injury received from an “agency or instrumentality of the railroad company.” In view of this language of the request it cannot be assumed that the jury were so inattentive as not to understand that when the Circuit Judge in the same connection *169spoke of a passenger getting hurt on a railroad train, he meant hurt by the railroad’s agency or instrumentality.
6 The following instruction given at request of plaintiff, taken alone, stated the law against the defendant too broadly: “If an engineer wilfully or intentionally fail or' refuse to see a passenger at a flag station, the passenger may recover punitive damages. Also if a conductor promises to hold the train and does not.” Many emergencies may be imagined which would make it the imperative duty of a conductor not to stop for a passenger’s signals at a flag station, or to disregard his promise to hold a train for a passenger, and if the instruction stood alone it would require a reversal. But in other portions of the charge the Circuit Judge gave the instruction with clearness and elaboration that all the conditions and 'emergencies were to be considered in deciding whether it was the duty of the conductor to take plaintiff up or to stop on his signals. Considering the entire charge on this subject, we do not think the jury could have been misled.