Snodgrass v. Spokane & Inland Empire Railroad

Citations

• 87 Wash. 308
• 151 P. 815
• 1915 Wash. LEXIS 915

Syllabus

<p>Railroads—Animals on Track—Private Crossings—Agreement —Construction. Under a right of way agreement whereby a railroad company was to maintain a private crossing and gates, which the owner could leave open at his own risk, the owner, in leaving the gates open, assumed only the risk of accidents happening at the crossing; and the contract did not supplant Rem. & Bal. Code, §§ 8730, 8731, making the company liable for stock killed on its failure to fence its track, where the stock escaped through the open gates to the public highway and strayed upon the track at a distant point.</p> <p>Same — Animals on Track — Negligence — Contributory Negligence—Question eor Jury. Whether the owner of stock which he allowed to escape, and a railroad company which killed the stock upon its track, were in pari delicto, is a question of fact for the jury, if, upon the evidence, different minds might honestly reach different results.</p> <p>Same—Animals on Track—Negligence—Evidence—Sueeiciency. The evidence sustains findings that a motorman of an electric train was guilty of negligence in killing horses on the track, where it appears that the road was straight for a mile and a half and the horses had not been outside the rails, that the motorman would have discovered them, if he had used reasonable diligence, when within 350 feet from them, which would have been in time to have checked the train or given warning whistle and avoided the injury.</p>