Williams v. Field Transportation Co.

Willie Williams sued Field Transportation Company and J. M. Brown, its employee, for damages on account of personal injuries assertedly sustained during the loading of one of its trucks. Following verdict and judgment in favor of the corporation and Brown, a new trial was granted “upon the sole ground of the insufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict as to all of the issues.” The appeal is from that order.

*697 Brown, a truck driver employed by Field, was sent to the premises of Industrial Engineering Company to pick up a number of pieces of 16-inch pipe 40 feet long, each of which weighed 1,800 pounds. Upon arrival he presented his trucking order to W. E. Trimmel, the yard superintendent, and there was some conversation as to the method to be used in loading and stacking the pipe. Trimmel said that to place it in a pyramid would provide maximum safety but Brown, after a telephone conversation with his company’s dispatcher, determined to use the strip or tier method, which allowed a larger load on the truck.

Trimmel pointed out to Brown that his truck was not adequately equipped to carry the pipe in tiers because it had no stringers. Brown then went to a dunnage pile,…