Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Co. v. Superior Oil Co.

Early in the morning on a foggy winter day, a Plymouth sedan automobile driven by Charles C. Nourse, one of the petroleum engineers of the Standard Oil Company, collided with a moving freight train at the Rosedale crossing approximately five miles west of Bakersfield, thereby derailing 11 ears, and destroying their cargo as well as damaging the track of The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company. Mr. Nourse was on his way home to Taft after working in a unitized oilfield near Bakersfield, known as the Greeley Field, of which the Standard Oil Company of California was, by contract, the operating agent. The latter company paid plaintiff the sum of $40,000 as its share of the alleged total damage of $62,147.75, and other defendants similarly paid $2,000 to the plaintiff, receiving in return covenants not to sue.

Other signatories of the Greeley Field contract, the respondents herein, are the Superior Oil Company, Socony-Mobil Oil Company, Inc., and Signal Oil and Gas Company. The complaint alleges that Mr. Nourse was an agent of the named defendants, that his negligence proximately caused the collision with the freight train, that he was acting within the course and scope of…