Court Opinion

ID: 7810000
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-07 17:11:46.390376+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:30:26.645344
License: Public Domain

McCULLOCH, C. J. This appeal is from a judgment of the circuit court of Pulaski County in two consolidated actions instituted against appellee for damages resulting from injuries, received by the appellant in one of the cases, and by appellant’s intestate in the other case, while riding on one of appellee’s freight trains. Williams, the appellant in one of the cases, was seriously injured, and G-raham, appellant’s intestate in the other case, received injuries which resulted in his death. The trial court gave a peremptory instruction in favor of appellee, and the only question before us for consideration is whether the testimony was sufficient, viewing it in the light most favorable to the rights of appellants, to warrant a verdict in their favor. Williams and G-raham were young men residing in the State of Telmessee and started on a trip to Oklahoma for the purpose of working in the harvest fields in that State. They attempted to make the trip on the railroad without paying fare, that is to say they undertook to “beat their way” to the journey’s end. They, together with others who were bent on the same mission, rode on a freight train from Memphis to1 Argenta and then walked to Hot Springs junction, which is just outside of the southern limits of the city of Little Rock, where they boarded a through freight train. The rules of the company did not permit passengers on through freight trains, but in violation of the rules, two of the brakemen allowed these young men and quite a number of others to board the train. The testimony shows that the brakemen found these young men on the train and consented for them to remain there after paying a trifling sum for permission to ride, and that they let others board the train along the route. They directed the young men to get into furniture car, which the proof 'shows was about eighteen inches wider than an ordinary car. Whenever a new man would board the car, one of the brakemen would come in and require him to pay fifty cents to ride. The car was crowded and it was a warm day in June and and the brakemen informed the men in the car that they might leave the side doors open except while they were passing through a town. About a mile east of Magazine, Arkansas, there is abridge about seventy-five feet long with an iron railing’or side structure about three feet high. The extra width of the furniture car in which the young men were riding, of course, narrowed the space between the side of the car and the structure of the bridge. Williams and Graham and another one of the young men were sitting in the door with their legs hanging down the side when the train went over the bridge at a speed of about thirty miles per hour, and their feet and legs struck against the bridge structure and the injuries heretofore mentioned were inflicted. Graham was jerked from the car and instantly killed. Williams’ leg was broken and he was otherwise injured. The testimony shows that one of the brakemen was in the car where the boys were sitting in the door about fifteen minutes before the train reached the bridge. The act of negligence set forth in each of the complaints consists of the failure of the brakemen to warn the men of the danger of sitting with their legs hanging out of the door. According to the undisputed evidence in the ease, it is a violation of the rules of the company for the trainmen to accept passengers on a through freight train, and that the men who rode on the train, including the injured parties mentioned, were aware of this fact. In other words, they knew that they had no right to ride on the train. The fact that only a trifling sum was exacted of them makes it plain that they knew that the trainmen were not acting in good faith or with authority to allow passengers to ride on the train. That being true, they were no more than trespassers, and the servants of the defendant company owed them no duty except to refrain from injuring them by any act of negligence committed after discovery of their perilous position. The servants of the company were under no legal duty to warn these trespassers of the hazards of that mode of travel, but, on the contrary, the trespassers assumed the risk of all the dangers incident to the situation. As stated by Judge Riddick in a similar case (St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Ry. Co. v. Read, 76 Ark. 106), the liability of the company, if it exists at all, must rest upon the wanton and wilful act of employees after discovering the peril of the trespasser. In that case, as in this, the injured party was wrongfully riding on a through freight train, and the injuries resulted from a collision caused by the negligence of the servants of the company, but this court held that there was no liability on the part of the company for the injuries so inflicted. So, in the present case, if it be conceded that there was negligence on the part of the company in failing to provide additional space between the sides of the passing cars and the bridge structure, that was not such negligence as would render the company liable to a trespasser on the train to whom it owed no duty except, as before stated, to refrain from acts of wilful negligence after discovering that the trespasser was in danger. Under no view of the law can it be held that the company’s servant’s, under the circumstances described, owed the trespassers on the train the duty of instruction or of warning them of the dangers of the journey. The judgment of the circuit court was, therefore, correct, and the same is affirmed.