Yazoo City v. Birchett

Citations

• 89 Miss. 700
• 42 So. 569

Syllabus

<p>1. Municd?alities. Oienership of electric plant. Injury from electricity. Liability.</p> <p>If a municipality embark in the management of any utility for profit its liability is determined by the rules applicable to private corporations or individuals conducting such enterprises.</p> <p>2. Same. Proasmiate cause.</p> <p>Where a telephone lineman, while climbing a pole of his company, was injured by coming in contact with a guy wire of an electric plant, charged with electricity escaping by reason of defective insulation, the proximate cause of the injury was the current negligently imparted to the guy wire, although he would not have been injured if he had not stood upon a step of his company touching a small abandoned wire which connected with the guy wire, thus forming a short circuit.</p> <p>3. Jury Trials. Abuse of Argument. Failure to object.</p> <p>Reversible error cannot be predicated of the fact that an attorney for the plaintiff, during his argument to the jury:</p> <p>(a) Read a newspaper statement of the financial condition of an industrial plant owned by defendant, if, upon objection, the court directed the jury to disregard it and the offending attorney acknowledged his error and asked that it be disregarded; nor that he</p> <p>(5) Stated to the jury that, according to the standard tables of mortality, the life expectancy of the person for whose death the suit was brought was a designated number of years, there being no evidence of which to predicate the statement, if, upon objection, the offending attorney acknowledged his error and requested the jury to disregard the statement; nor that he (o) Read to the jury the instructions asked by defendant and refused by the court, if no objection thereto was made by defendant before verdict.</p>