Court Opinion

ID: 9809473
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:14:54.500879+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:30:43.226927
License: Public Domain

Brown, J.,
concurring: I concur in the opinion written for the Court by Mr. Justice Qormor, which to my mind is conclusive that the defendant company is not liable for the unwarranted and unauthorized act of its brakeman in shooting at the plaintiff. There is not a scintilla of evidence in the record that the brakeman shot at the plaintiff in an endeavor either to keep plaintiff off the train or to put him off after he was on. Upon all the evidence the act of the brakeman was neither authorized by the defendant nor done in the discharge of the brakeman’s *479duty to it. It was plainly a reckless, “devil-may-care” act, for the consequences of wbicb tbe person wbo did it should be punished, and not his innocent employer, who could not prevent it and did not ratify'it.
In the iStewart case, in my opinion, the company is held liable upon a well-defined ground, supported by most respectable authority, to the effect that a steam locomotive is such a dangerous instrumentality that the company is liable for the manner in which the engineer selected by the company uses it when running it in the company’s business. That' principle is not involved in the case.
I do not understand, nor do I think anyone else seriously believes, that railway or other corporations claim for their employees the privileges of the ancient nobility of France to shoot down innocent persons at will or to commit other lawless acts. I have so much respect for the great mass of railway employees that I do not think they merit any such' severe censure. My experience has convinced me that they are very generally a most faithful, law-abiding as well as highly respected class of our industrial population. But now and then, as in all other callings, however great or however humble, some reckless individual will be found. When his lawless act is done in the discharge of his duty to his master, or when it is authorized or ratified by him, then the master is justly held to be liable for the damage inflicted, however innocent the master may be; but when such act was not done in furtherance of the master’s business, and was neither authorized nor ratified by him, but was the wanton, reckless, personal act of the servant, which the master could neither foresee nor prevent, and does not ratify, then it is neither law nor justice to hold the master responsible, and this applies to corporate as well as individual employers of labor.
Such has been the law of this and our mother country from time immemorial.