Edward Douglass White

“ It is true to company made a request on the subject which the court declined to give, but that request, we are of opinion, taken as a whole, instead of clarifying any ambiguity deemed to exist in the instruction which the court gave would have served to obscure it. ”

“ The material facts disclosed by the plaintiff's testimony are as follows: Brown, a head brakeman, and other members of a local freight train crew on the day in question were engaged in the yards at Ashdown, Arkansas, in making up an extra freight train to be taken out by an extra crew to Hugo, Oklahoma. The cars intended for the interstate train were placed on an east and west passing track east of a switch connecting a spur track which ran in a northeasterly direction past a stave mill. ”

“ It is insisted that the abandonment of the claim as to a violation of the safety appliance act necessarily withdrew all evidence tending to show that the couplers were defective, and, in the absence of such evidence, the proof established as a matter of law that the plaintiff assumed the risk, and the court should have directed a verdict in favor of the railroad. We think the proposition is plainly without merit. ”