Court Opinion

ID: 9624610
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:11:20.569931+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:51.223621
License: Public Domain

*382MR. CHIEF JUSTICE JAMES T. HARRISON
(dissenting):
Although I dislike to take a position contrary to the majority of the Court, I cannot concur in all that is said in the foregoing opinion, nor in the result.
Decedent for 9 months had been employed in the lumber company yard, was familiar with the layout of the premises, lighting conditions, the crossing at which the collision occurred, and the fact that a switch train was on the track leading across the crossing immediately before he attempted to cross in front of the backing train. Likewise he knew of the lumber piles alongside the track and that switching operations were carried on at night during the shift that he worked. This is all recounted in the majority opinion. Too, the presence of one of the switching crew at the crossing with a light evidence the immediate presence of the switching train.
Error was asserted in the court giving its instruction No. 13, which reads:
“You are hereby instructed that a person approaching a railway crossing has the responsibility to exercise care and to take reasonable precautions under the circumstances to assure himself, by actual observation, that there is no danger from an approaching train. Any failure to so do would constitute negligence.”
I do not believe that this instruction made the decedent an insurer of his own safety and imposed an excessive burden upon him, as the majority hold. The majority says that it required him to observe the unobservable. Is it possible that no longer does one have to stop, look and listen or “to take reasonable precautions under the circumstances”? When one knows that the sight of a switching operation is hidden from his view by a stack of lumber, the presence of which is well known to him, should be nevertheless proceed by reason of what counsel during argument termed as misinterpreted signals?
*383In my view the giving of this instruction was not error under the facts in this case.
As to the “unavoidable accident” instruction of which complaint was made, in my view it should not have been given but it was not reversible error under the facts present here and could not have misled the jury to the detriment of the plaintiff.
It is my opinion that the verdict reached by this jury was justified by the facts in this cause, that no reversible error appears, and that the judgment entered thereon should be affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE CASTLES, concurs in the above dissent of MR. CHIEF JUSTICE JAMES T. HARRISON.