Court Opinion

ID: 9832376
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 21:52:10.752523+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:46.231487
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
Appellant earnestly insists that the extent of its duty to appellee while he was in the baggage room was to exercise ordinary care to avoid injury to him, and that in requiring the exercise of a degree of care higher 'than ordinary care the charge was erroneous. In one of the assignments of error to the charge given, it was expressly stated that the charge was erroneous “because the law only required the defendant company to exercise that degree of care that a very cautious, competent, and prudent person would exercise under the same or similar circumstances.” In the other assignment to the charge, complaint was made that the charge was erroneous “because the railroad company was required to exercise that degree of care that a very cautious, competent, and prudent person would exercise under the same or similar circumstances.” Under the assignment which alleged error in the refusal of a requested instruction that plaintiff could not recover if the jury should find that his injuries were the result of an accident and that the defendant’s employés in handling the baggage on the occasion in controversy exercised ordinary care, a single proposition was presented, which reads: “Where a party is injured, which was the result of an accident, and there was no negligence on the part of the party injuring him, no recovery can be had.” By this proposition the assignment last referred to was limited to the single complaint that the court erred in not instructing the jury that if plaintiff’s injuries were the result of an unavoidable accident he could not recover. In the original disposition of the case we construed the assignments as an admission by appellant that it owed to appellee, while he was in the baggage room, the duty to exercise that degree of care announced in Railway v. Halloren, 53 Tex. 46, 37 Am. Rep. 744, Railway v. Welch, 86 Tex. 203, 24 S. W. 390, 40 Am. St. Rep. 829, T. & P. Ry. v. Beezley, 56 Tex. Civ. App. 245, 120 S. W. 1136, and other decisions cited in appellant’s brief, which was a higher degree of care than ordinary care. Proceeding upon that assumption, we did not discuss as a mooted question whether or not appellant owed to appellee while he was in the baggage room the duty to exercise more than ordinary care to avoid injuring him. Even though it should be held that appellant is not precluded by his assignments from now insisting that the trial court erred in not instructing the jury that the exercise of ordinary care to avoid injuring him was the extent of its duty to him while in the baggage room, that contention would be overruled. In support of that contention appellant now cites Thompson on Carriers, § 209; Hutchinson on Carriers, § 521a; Tex. & Pac. Ry. v. Miller, 79 Tex. 78, 15 S. W. 264, 11 L. R. A. 395, 23 Am. St. Rep. 308, and many authorities from other states.
The following quotation from Thompson on Carriers, § 209, is quoted in Railway v. Miller, supra: “The rule imposing upon the carrier of passengers the highest degree of care has this limitation: It applies only to those means and measures of safety which the passenger of necessity must trust wholly to the carrier. It is, in general, applicable only to the period during which the carrier is in a certain sense the bailee of the person of the passenger.” As appellee was injured by one of appellant’s servants in its baggage room, which was as much within its exclusive control as were its passenger cars, we fail to perceive why the high degree of care was not due him from appellant, even under the rule just quoted. However, we think the conclusion announced in our original opinion relative to the degree of care which appellant owed appellee is fully sustained by the following decisions of our own courts: M., K. & T. Ry. Co. v. Harrison, 56 Tex. Civ. App. 17, 120 S. W. 256, cited in the former opinion; Tex. Mid. Ry. v. Dean, 98 Tex. 517, 85 S. W. 1135; S. A. & A. P. Ry. Co. v. Turney, 33 Tex. Civ. App. 626, 78 S. W. 256; G., *713C. & S. F. Ry. v. Butcher, 83 Tex. 309, 18 S. W. 583; M., K. & T. Ry. Co. v. Byrd, 40 Tex. Civ. App. 315, 89 S. W. 991.
The motion is overruled.