Northern Pacific Railway Company, a Corporation v. Ernest Everett

This is an appeal from a judgment entered on a verdict for $8,632.76 damages, awarded by a jury for the wrongful death of appellee’s sixteen-year-old daughter. Federal jurisdiction rests on diversity of citizenship. 28 U.S.C. § 1332 .

The death of appellee’s daughter was admittedly caused by injuries sustained in a crossing collision between a 1940 Dodge panel truck which she had been driving and one of appellant’s trains. The collision occurred in mid-afternoon on a clear, dry day, at a point approximately 5 miles east of Ellensberg, Washington, where a country road running in a general northerly-southerly direction crosses appellant’s tracks running in a general easterly-westerly direction.

The uncontradicted testimony discloses : that shortly prior to the collision appellee’s daughter was driving the panel truck along the country road in a northerly direction, approaching the crossing at a speed of approximately ten miles per hour; that as the truck neared the roadbed, it slowed down or stopped, appeared to “buck up” onto the tracks, and stalled directly in the path of the west-bound train; that just before the impact the engineer saw the girl get out of the truck and take a…