Court Opinion

ID: 9444663
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:08:03.480784+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:57.357097
License: Public Domain

WILBUR K. MILLER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I cannot go along with my brothers of the majority, as it seems to me the trial judge was clearly correct in directing a verdict for the defendant on the opening statement of counsel for the plaintiff.
According to the statement, Mrs. Pomeroy left her seat and went toward the back of the coach. She was not seen thereafter by anyone until, some hours later, her body was discovered about two and one-half miles from the Union Station. “That is the only thing we know about it,” said plaintiff’s counsel to the jury, “except what the facts developed *597later.” Counsel mentioned no later-developed facts, except that there was a curve in the track at the point where it is supposed Mrs. Pomeroy fell from the train; and that, a short time after she fell, a brakeman passing through the coach found the vestibule door open.1
Such are the only facts stated upon which plaintiff sought damages from the railroad company. There was no offer to prove who opened the door, nor how long it had been open when the brakeman discovered it. It is common knowledge that for safety reasons vestibule doors are not kept locked and can be opened by any person of ordinary strength. Yet there was no offer to show the door had not been opened by the decedent herself or by some other passenger, except the suggestion that it was highly improbable that Mrs. Pomeroy would have been strong enough to open it.
The trial judge aptly and succinctly stated the applicable principles of law when he said:
“Under this set of facts, assuming that the jury should have found all the facts stated by plaintiff’s counsel in his opening statement to be true and gathered all reasonable inferences therefrom, it would have been required to speculate as to whether the accident resulted from some cause within the railroad’s control of from the act of some third person or the decedent herself.
“In view of the fact that the vestibule door was not under the exclusive control of the defendant railroad and there was no offer to prove that the factors outside defendant’s *598control did not bring about the accident, the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur is inapplicable to the case.
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In my opinion, the following language of the Supreme Court in Pennsylvania R. Co. v. Chamberlain, 1933, 288 U.S. 333, 339, 53 S.Ct. 391, 393, 77 L.Ed. 819, applies as well to this case as to that one:
“We, therefore, have a case belonging to that class of cases where proven facts give equal support to each of two inconsistent inferences; in which event, neither of them being established, judgment, as a matter of law, must go against the party upon whom rests the necessity of sustaining one of these inferences as against the other, before he is entitled to recover. [Cases cited.]”
The majority say, however, that “From the opening statement, this is not merely a ease of an unexplained fall from a moving train.” They do not read the statement of plaintiff’s counsel “as a mere assertion of liability to be inferred from the fact of an open vestibule door, but rather as an offer to prove, through the employees of the railroad, circumstances from which the jury can infer that the railroad negligently kept the door open, thereby causing the accident.”
It is observed, however, that the only thing counsel said he would prove by railroad witnesses was the degree of the curve in the track at the point where it is supposed Mrs. Pomeroy left the train. Counsel said, “[T]he amount of the curve I don’t know but it will be established on the witness stand by employees of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company.” I suggest that the curve, whatever its degree, is not a fact from which negligence could be inferred. At one point plaintiff’s counsel said, “[W]e will tell you more about that [vestibule] door later * But he said no more about it except to describe it as a dutch door.
In a bench colloquy following his opening statement, plaintiff’s counsel told the court he was relying on the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur and was not contending there was any specific negligence “unless it develops in the course of the trial, Your Honor, but I am not contending that.” The majority seem to treat this statement as an offer to prove specific negligence. To me it is no more than an expression of hope that some proof of negligence would unexpectedly appear, — but that what it might be, counsel had no idea.
When plaintiff’s counsel could state no negligent act or omission of the railroad company which caused Mrs. Pomeroy’s death, and could offer to prove no fact or circumstance from which causal negligence could properly be inferred, the trial judge had no alternative but to direct a verdict. He would not have been justified in permitting plaintiff’s counsel to proceed with proof merely because counsel hoped, like Mr. Micawber, that something would turn up. I would affirm the judgment of the District Court.

. The following paragraphs quoted from the statement are those in which counsel outlined the proof upon which he would rely as showing negligence on the part of the railroad company:
“That about five minutes before the train was scheduled to reach the Union Station in Washington Mrs. Pomeroy had touched Mr. Pomeroy’s shoulder and told him she was feeling very warm and was going out to get some air and would he get the baggage down from the baggage carriers, or whatever they might have been, and get ready to go.
“This was the last that Mrs. Pomeroy was seen by anybody alive. She went toward the back of the car. That is the only thing we know about it except what the facts developed later.
* Ms * *
“The evidence will show, and we agree on this, incidentally, that sometime about a point two and one-half to three miles outside of Washington the brakeman, Mr. William E\ Harrison, while passing through the car noticed that the vestibule door, that is the door going off the train— and we will tell you more about that door later — the vestibule door was open.
“The evidence will show that this door which is used for passengers leaving the train and imssengers boarding the train is what can be described as a dutch door; it has two halves, a bottom half and a top half. In order to open the lower half one must open the top half, and then the lower half is hinged and that swings open and latches up against the front of the car. The bottom half has a knob which has to be turned and pulled back in order to be latched against the side of the car.
“The evidence will show that the body of Mrs. Pomeroy was found about two and one-half hours later at a point approximately two and a half miles from the Union Station, so that when she left the car it must have been at least two and a half miles from the Union Station and might have been some few hundred feet more, as the body continued to go until she landed at that signal bridge.
“ * * * [T]he evidence will show that although she was a woman of good health she was a frail woman and of not much strength, and 69 years old, and it was highly improbable that a woman of her physical strength and of her age could have opened these doors which are very difficult to open at best by ordinary men.
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“The evidence will further show that at a point where she was presumed to have left this ear, that is fallen from the car in one way or another — there are no eye witnesses as to how she left the car — but the evidence will show that just prior to that point where the train meets the signal bridge there is a curve in the Pennsylvania track at that point; the amount of the curve 1 don’t know but it will be established on the witness stand by employees of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company.”