Court Opinion

ID: 9832776
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 22:11:16.253263+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:52.248366
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
A plethora of motions has greeted the reconsideration of this case; rehearings being asked respectively by appellees Isaac and Mary Roberts, and appellant railway company, while the latter has also by separate application requested other and additional findings of fact.
Unconvinced that error was committed in our former judgment, it will be adhered to, and both motions for rehearing are overruled ; occasion is here taken, however, under the aid given us through appellant’s criticism of it, to somewhat modify this expression in the original opinion:
“If one [meaning a flagman] had been there, he could either have prevented the boy from going on the tracks at all until the freight had passed, or hurried him on across ahead of the switch engine, or induced him to stand still between the two tracks, or possibly have stopped the train before it reached the point of the accident.”
The language used makes a broader statement of what might have been the result of then having a flagman present at the crossing than was in mind; it was not intended to therein find as an actual fact that he could have prevented tne accident in each and all of the detailed ways mentioned in the quoted sentence, but only that he both might and could have warned the boy of his danger, in some one or possibly more of the ways indicated, and in all probability have thereby prevented the injury.
The appellees Isaac and Mary Roberts urge that the record did contain sufficient facts upon which the jury could reasonably estimate the financial benefits they would probably have received from their minor son until his maturity, citing in support of their view the cases of Brunswig v. White, 70 Tex. 504, 8 S. W. 85, and Railway Go. v. Measles, 81 Tex. 474, 17 S. W. 124.
But when the facts in those cases are compared with what appears in their own, plainly the same rule of law could not apply to both; in the White Case the action was by the parents for the death of -a little six year old daughter, who, in addition to being bright and intelligent and in good health, was shown to have performed much valuable service in helping her parents operate a dairy; her mother testifying:
“She was of great assistance about the house. She aided me in taking care of my baby, then about a year old; she helped to wash the dishes, and swept the house, and rendered other important services about the. house. We were poor people and all of us worked.”
A similar condition in effect likewise obtained in the Measles Case, as we read the opinion; there the mother had sued on account of injuries to her seven year old son, and, to use the language of the court:
“It had been shown that the boy was obedient and healthy; that he was therefore both willing and able to work; and hence that his services would be as valuable at least as those of an average boy.”
There had then been given testimony as to the average value of the services of boys of about his age, which the court said might have been unnecessary, but certainly was neither impertinent nor improper.
As stated in our original opinion, no such proof was made in this case; the sole fact shown being that his boy was in good health before his arm was cut off; that was an insufficient basis for the award given his parents.
On the application for further fact findings in abundance of caution that no injustice on that account he in our opinion done appellant, we cheerfully enlarge upon the former findings as follows: The distance between the tracks upon which the two oppositely moving trains passed each other was stated .as about 5 feet; the railway company challenges this statement' as not being sup*679ported by the evidence, insisting that it was shown to be 20 feet. After re-examining the record, however, we find no direct testimony specifically fixing this particular distance in feet, and therefore modify our former statement to that extent; but it does appear that the space was a very narrow one, and Janie Riggs, an eyewitness of the accident, and the only witness whose' testimony covered the point, repeatedly stated that when she first saw the boy, just before he was hit, he was standing between the two tracks on which the trains were thus moving, and that the switch engine was about 4 or 5 feet from him ; she then continues:
“At one place it is as far as to the railing in this room between those two tracks, but at this place you cannot walk betwixt them. I did not see the boy do anything just before he was hit, but just waiting there. I guess he' was waiting to get across. At the time the switch engine was four or five feet from the boy there was a freight coming in on the main line track. The engine and some cars of the freight had passed the boy at that time. The boy was facing the switch engine at the time he was struck: I did not at any time see the boy on the track that the switch engine was on. After he seen the switch engine was coming in, the boy moved out of the way of the switch engine, because it was a narrow space at the crossing, across the road. The tracks run so close together he had to stand further up in the yard to go across. ⅜ ⅝ ⅜ £reigkt was coming in, and he was too close to the switch engine and he got out of the way and got too close to the freight. The way he got out of the way was, he just stepped back a little bit from where he was standing.”
It is true that on cross-examination, when shown a map made by one of appellant’s witnesses, which he testified was drawn to a scale of 20 feet to the inch, she attempted to approximately indicate thereon the relative positions of the two tracks, the switch engine, the freight train, and of the boy at the time, but we do not think this, as against her previously mentioned direct statements about the distance, made from her own observation and knowledge, would justify a finding that the tracks were approximately 20 feet apart, although the plat may have shown about an inch of space between them.
In its motion now under consideration appellant requests that, in lieu of this court’s statement of the facts immediately surrounding the injury of the boy, as appearing, in its opinion, substantially the following findings be made:
“Benjamin Roberts lived on one side of the railroad tracks, which were laid in a public street, and a store was situated on the opposite side. Benjamin Roberts’ aunt sent him to the store to buy some onions, and when he returned his mother immediately sent him back again to buy some onions for her. It was in performance of this errand that he was hurt. When his mother sent him back to the store, he proceeded to the street in which” the tracks were laid, and crossed over the main line track, and then saw coming out of the yards from the east a switch engine, going to the west, and he stood there between the main line track, and the track on which the switch engine was- coming, looking at the switch engine for the space of time, variously estimated at from two to ten minute's. While he was' standing between the tracks and while the switch engine was approaching him, a heavy freight train going eastward reached him, and the locomotive and four cars passed him by the time the switch engine got to where he was standing, and he then backed away from the switch engine and into the fifth car of the freight train, which knocked him down and ran over his right arm, necessitating its amputation near the shoulder.”
[10] We are unable to comply with the request and so find, for the reason that in the main, if not the only material, respect wherein the suggested statement differs from our own, it assumes that the boy first stood loitering between the two tracks looking at the switch engine coming toward him for from two to ten minutes, and then when, after that length of time, it got to where he was, he backed away from it and into the freight train; such is not our understanding of the effect of the evidence; the boy himself more than once testified that he stopped and stood waiting there to let the train (meaning the switch engine) go by; it is true he said he stood there some four or five minutes, but that probably meant nothing more than his method of estimating a brief period of time.
The same may likewise, we think, be said of the statement of Janie Riggs that it was some ten minutes between the time she first saw him standing there and the time he was hurt, 'if, indeed, she did not first see him there when he was making a prior trip to the store to the one during which the accident occurred; for the proof is undisputed that he made two like trips from his home to the store only a few minutes apart; moreover, the boy’s mother testified that it was only two or three minutes after she sent him to the store that they called to her he was hurt; this was on his second trip, because his aunt had sent him the first time.
We therefore Think the fair construction of the testimony, taken as a whole, is that the boy stopped and stood between the two tracks for the purpose of letting the switch engine go by, and, in attempting to get out of its way, backed into the freight train behind.
Pursuant to these conclusions, the corresponding orders have been entered upon the several motions discussed.