Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 135, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 June 1916 — KNOTTY POINT FOR LAWYERS [ARTICLE]

KNOTTY POINT FOR LAWYERS

Peculiar Damage Claim Resisted by Company Sued by Victim of Altogether Unusual Accident. The Docket reports this case: If a railroad train should leave the track and crash through the fence of your front yard, startling you from your sleep, so that in your hasty attempt to leave your bed your head becomes entangled in the bed rods and you are Injured, can you recover damages? Such is the question in Louisville and Nashville Railroad company vs. Chambers, 178 Southwestern Reporter, 1101. The opinion states that “in the instant case there was no apparent or seeming peril rendering reasonably and apparently necessary a choice of means of extrication therefrom and action upon that choice; nor is it made to appear that appellee made any such choice or acted thereupon. True, there came in the night time a loud crash at the front of his residence and a scream from his wife; but the noise of that crash and that scream were all that could possibly have come to the appellee’s senses. He saw no seeming peril; he is not here insisting that he sought to avert any seemingly impending danger and was thereby injured ; he only knows that Tie awoke in the night to find his neck entwined in the cool embrace of the rods at the head of his bed. How or when he got in that position he does not pretend to know. For aught the record shows he may have been nestling in that snug caress for some time before the crash of the car or the scream of his wife aroused him to the stern realities of his peculiar situation; or he may have been awakened by the crash, and while in a semi-conscious condition have become so entangled; or he may have been awakened by the scream of his wife and got in that position before reaching full consciousness.”