Melius v. Chicago, Milwaukee & Pugget Sound Railway Co.

Citations

• 71 Wash. 64
• 127 P. 575
• 1912 Wash. LEXIS 692

Syllabus

<p>Master and Servant — Injury to Servant — Sake Appliances— Common Use — Question eor Jury. Although the preponderance of the evidence shows that a “pin-and-ring” coupling is a safe and standard safety appliance for the equipment of railroad dump cars, where there was evidence that the nose or outward curve at the point of the pin did not insure the proper degree of safety and that the .pins on the particular car were shorter than they should have been, and that a sudden tightening of the chain would have a tendency to throw the point out; the question should be submitted to the jury, even if it was not probable that the two chains could become uncoupled at the same time and from the same cause.</p> <p>Appeal — Review—Harmless Error — Instructions. Prejudicial error may not be predicated on instructions that do not fit the facts of the particular case where other proper instructions were given so that the law of the case was before the jury.</p> <p>Master and Servant — Injury to Servant — Method op Work— Contributory Negligence — Question eor Jury. An experienced brakeman on ordinary trains is not guilty of contributory negligence, as a matter of law, when working on a dirt train, in following the direction of the conductor to turn on the air by means of an angle cock at the side of the car, instead of going to one at the end of the car, where he had no reason to apprehend danger.</p> <p>Same — Fellow Servants — Conductor and Brakeman. A conductor of a dirt train engaged in remedying a defect in a dump car is not a fellow servant of a brakeman, assisting him and working under his direction, but is a vice principal.</p> <p>Appeal — Review—Harmless Error — Instructions. A cause will not be reversed for the giving of instructions requested by both sides, hostile in theory and confusing, where the jury was not misled, although the court should have adopted a theory of its own, or given the instructions requested by one side only.</p>