If a claimant of real estate, out of possession, resorts to
force and violence amounting to a breach of the peace to obtain
possession from another claimant who is in peaceable possession,
and personal injury arises thereupon to the latter, the party using
such force and violence is liable in damages for the injury without
regard to the legal title, or to the right of possession.
Iron Mountain & Helena Railroad v. Johnson,
119 U. S. 608,
affirmed and applied.
A corporation is liable for
civiliter torts committed
by its servants and agents done by its authority, whether express
or implied.
In trespass on the case to recover for injuries caused by
gunshot wounds inflicted by defendant's servants, evidence of the
loss of power to have offspring, resulting directly and proximately
from the nature of the wound, may be received and considered by the
jury, although the declaration does not specify such loss as one of
the results of the wound.
In an action of trespass on the case against a corporation to
recover damages for injuries inflicted by its servants in a
forcible and violent seizure of a railroad, punitive damages within
the sum claimed in the declaration may be awarded by the jury if it
appears to their satisfaction that the defendant's officers and
servants, in the illegal assault
Page 122 U. S. 598
complained of, employed the force with bad intent and in
pursuance of an unlawful purpose, wantonly disturbing the peace of
the community and endangering life.
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company was in
peaceable possession of a railroad from Alamosa to Pueblo, and
while so in possession, the Denver and Rio Grande Railway Company,
by an armed force of several hundred men, acting as its agents and
employer, and under its vice-President and assistant general
manager, attacked with deadly weapons the agents and employer of
the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company having charge of
the railroad, and forcibly drove them from the same and took
forcible possession thereof. There was a demonstration of armed men
all along the line of the railroad seized, and while this was being
done and the seizure was being made, the plaintiff, an employee of
the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company, while on the
track of the road in the line of his employment, was fired upon by
men as he was passing and seriously wounded and injured.
Immediately upon the seizure of the railroad as aforesaid, the
Denver and Rio Grande Company accepted it and entered into
possession and commenced and for a time continued to use and
operate it as its own. The plaintiff brought this suit to recover
damages for his injuries.
Held that the Denver and Rio
Grande Company was liable in tort for the acts of its agents, and
that the plaintiff could recover damages for the injuries received,
and punitive damages under the circumstances.
This action was brought by James Harris, the defendant in error,
against the Denver and Rio Grande Railway Company, a corporation of
the State of Colorado, to recover damages for injuries which, he
alleges, were sustained by him in his person by reason of an
illegal and wrongful assault made by that company, acting by its
servants and agents. The plea was not guilty. There was a verdict
and judgment in favor of the plaintiff for nine thousand dollars.
The judgment was affirmed in the supreme court of the territory,
and has been brought here for review.
The defendant introduced no evidence, although its officers were
the chief actors on the occasion when the plaintiff was injured.
The case made by the latter and other witnesses testifying in his
behalf is stated by the supreme court of the territory in the
following extract from its opinion:
"The record discloses the fact that there was evidence on the
trial in the lower court to the effect that, about the tenth or
twelfth of June, 1879, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe
Page 122 U. S. 599
Railway Company was in peaceable possession, by its agents and
employees, of a certain railroad in the State of Colorado running
from Alamosa to the City of Pueblo in that state; that at or about
that date, and while the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway
Company were so in possession of said railroad, the plaintiff in
error, the Denver and Rio Grande Railway Company, by an armed force
of several hundred men, acting as its agents and employees, and
under its vice-president and assistant general manager, attacked
with deadly weapons the agents and employees of said Atchison,
Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company having charge of said railroad,
and forcibly drove them from the same and took forcible possession
thereof; that there was a demonstration of armed men all along the
line of the railroad seized, and while this was being done and the
seizure was being made, the defendant in error, who was an employee
of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company on said line
of railroad, and while on the track of the road and on a hand car
thereon in the line of his employment, was fired upon by men as he
was passing, and seriously wounded and injured; that immediately
upon the seizure of the railroad as aforesaid, the plaintiff in
error accepted it and at once entered into possession thereof and
commenced and for a time continued to use and operate the same as
its own. "
Page 122 U. S. 605
MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, after stating the facts of the case in the
foregoing language, delivered the opinion of the Court.
One of the propositions advanced by counsel for the company is
this: that it appears from the plaintiff's case and by his evidence
that he voluntarily armed himself, and, taking the law into his own
hands, joined an illegal assembly, for the purpose, if necessary,
of committing murder; that in the course of the riot and rout, he
received a wound at the hands of those whom he had sought by
violence to destroy; that under such circumstances the law will not
permit him to recover for an alleged assault, but conclusively
presumes his assent thereto, nor will the law permit him to recover
through the medium and by the aid of an illegal transaction to
which he was a party, and which constitutes the foundation of his
case.
The same proposition was stated in another form in argument:
that the plaintiff engaged voluntarily, and not for his necessary
self-defense, in a physical combat with others, and cannot, upon
principle, maintain a civil action to recover damages for injuries
received in such combat at the hands of his adversary unless the
latter beat him excessively or unreasonably; this, upon the ground
that
"where two parties participate in the commission of a criminal
act, and one party suffers damages thereby, he is not entitled to
indemnity or contribution from the other party."
These propositions have no application in the present case. The
evidence, taken together, furnishes no basis for the suggestion
that the plaintiff voluntarily joined an illegal assembly for the
purpose, if necessary, of committing murder, or any other criminal
offense; nor does it justify the assertion that he voluntarily
engaged in a physical combat with others. All that he did on the
occasion of his being injured was by way of preparation to protect
himself, and the property of which he and his co employees were in
peaceable possession, against organized violence. It appears in
proof,
Page 122 U. S. 606
as stated by the court below, that the Atchison, Topeka and
Santa Fe Railroad Company was in the actual, peaceable possession
of the road, when the other company, by an armed body of men,
organized and under the command of its chief officers, proceeded,
in a violent manner, to drive the agents and servants of the former
company from the posts to which they had been respectively
assigned. It was a demonstration of force and violence that
disturbed the peace of the entire country along the line of the
railway and involved the safety and lives of many human beings. It
is a plain case, on the proof, of a corporation taking the law into
its own hands and, by force and the commission of a breach of the
peace, determining the question of the right to the possession of a
public highway established primarily for the convenience of the
people. The courts of the territory were open for the redress of
any wrongs that had been or were being committed against the
defendant by the other company. If an appeal to the law for the
determination of the dispute as to right of possession would have
involved some delay, that was no reason for the employment of force
-- least of all for the use of violent means under circumstances
imperiling the peace of the community and the lives of citizens. To
such delays all, whether individuals or corporations, must submit,
whatever may be the temporary inconvenience resulting therefrom. We
need scarcely suggest that this duty, in a peculiar sense, rests
upon corporations, which keep in their employment large bodies of
men whose support depends upon their ready obedience of the orders
of their superior officers and who, being organized for the
accomplishment of illegal purposes, may endanger the public peace,
as well as the personal safety and the property of others besides
those immediately concerned in their movements.
These principles, under somewhat different circumstances, were
recognized and enforced by this Court at the present term. One
Johnson was in the actual, peaceable possession of eighteen miles
of a railroad built by him for a railroad company, and was running
his own locomotives over it. He claimed the right to hold
possession until he was paid for his
Page 122 U. S. 607
work. But the company, disputing his right to possession,
ejected him by force and violence. He brought his action of
forcible entry and detainer. This Court said that the party
"so using force and acquiring possession may have the superior
title, or may have the better right, to the present possession, but
the policy of the law in this class of cases is to prevent the
disturbances of the public peace, to forbid any person righting
himself in a case of that kind by his own hand and violence, and to
require that the party who has in this manner obtained possession
shall restore it to the party from whom it has been so obtained,
and then, when the parties are
in statu quo, or in the
same position as they were before the use of violence, the party
out of possession must resort to legal means to obtain his
possession, as he should have done in the first instance."
Iron Mountain & Helena Railroad v. Johnson,
119 U. S. 608,
119 U. S. 611.
While this language was used in a case arising under a local
statute, relating to actions of forcible entry and detainer, it is
not without force in cases like this, where the peaceable
possession of property is disturbed by such means as constitute a
breach of the peace. If, in the employment of force and violence,
personal injury arises therefrom to the person or persons thus in
peaceable possession, the party using such unnecessary force and
violence is liable in damages without reference to the question of
legal title or right of possession.
Reference was made in argument to those portions of the charge
that refer to the liability of corporations for torts committed by
their employees and servants.
In
Philadelphia, Wilmington
& Baltimore Railroad v. Quigley, 21 How. 207,
this Court held that a railroad corporation was responsible for the
publication by them of a libel in which the capacity and skill of a
mechanic and builder of depots, bridges, stationhouses, and other
structures for railroad companies, were falsely and maliciously
disparaged and undervalued. The publication in that case consisted
in the preservation, in the permanent form of a book for
distribution among the persons belonging to the corporation, of a
report made by a committee of the company's board of directors in
relation
Page 122 U. S. 608
to the administration and dealings of the plaintiff as a
superintendent of the road. The Court, upon a full review of the
authorities, held it to be the result of the cases
"that for acts done by the agents of a corporation, either
in contractu or
in delicto, in the course of its
business and of their employment, the corporation is responsible as
an individual is responsible under similar circumstances."
In
State v. Morris & Essex Railroad, 23 N.J.Law
369, it was well said that
"If a corporation has itself no hands with which to strike, it
may employ the hands of others, and it is now perfectly well
settled, contrary to the ancient authorities, that a corporation is
liable
civiliter for all torts committed by its servants
or agents by authority of the corporation, express or implied. . .
. The result of the modern cases is that a corporation is liable
civiliter for torts committed by its servants or agents
precisely as a natural person, and that it is liable as a natural
person for the acts of its agents done by its authority, express or
implied, though there be neither a written appointment under seal,
nor a vote of the corporation constituting the agency or
authorizing the act."
See also Salt Lake City v. Hollister, 118 U.
S. 256,
118 U. S. 260;
New Jersey Steamboat Company v. Brockett, 121 U.
S. 637;
National Bank v. Graham, 100 U.
S. 699,
100 U. S. 702.
The instructions given to the jury were in harmony with these
salutary principles. Whatever may be said of some expressions in
the charge when detached from their context, the whole charge was
as favorable to the defendant as it was entitled to demand under
the evidence.
One of the consequences of the wound received by the plaintiff
at the hands of the defendant's servants was the loss of the power
to have offspring -- a loss resulting directly and proximately from
the nature of the wound. Evidence of this fact was therefore
admissible, although the declaration does not in terms specify such
loss as one of the results of the wound. The court very properly
instructed the jury that such impotency, if caused by the
defendant's wrong, might be considered in estimating any
compensatory damages to which the plaintiff might be found, under
all the evidence, to be entitled.
Wade v.
Leroy, 20 How. 34,
61 U. S. 44.
Page 122 U. S. 609
The court also instructed the jury that they were not limited to
compensatory damages, but could give punitive or exemplary damages
if it was found that the defendant acted with bad intent and in
pursuance of an unlawful purpose to forcibly take possession of the
railway occupied by the other company, and in so doing shot the
plaintiff, causing him incurable and permanent injury, always
bearing in mind that the total damages could not exceed the sum
claimed in the declaration. This instruction, the company contends,
was erroneous. Its counsel argue that while a master may be
accountable to an injured party to the extent of compensatory
damages for the wrongful acts of his servant provided the servant
is acting within the general scope of his employment in committing
the injury, even though the master may not have authorized or may
have even forbidden the doing of the particular act complained of,
yet he cannot be mulcted in exemplary damages unless he directed
the servant to commit the special wrong in question in such manner
as to personally identify himself with the servant in the
perpetration of the injurious act.
The right of the jury in some cases to award exemplary or
punitive damages is no longer an open question in this Court. In
Day v.
Woodworth, 13 How. 371, which was an action of
trespass for tearing down and destroying a mill dam, this Court
said that in all actions of trespass, and all actions on the case
for torts,
"A jury may inflict what are called exemplary, punitive, or
vindictive damages upon a defendant, having in view the enormity of
his offense rather than the measure of compensation to the
plaintiff,"
and that such exemplary damages were allowable "in actions of
trespass where the injury has been wanton or malicious, or gross
and outrageous." The general rule was recognized and enforced in
Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad Co. v.
Quigley, which, as we have seen, was an action to recover
damages against a corporation for libel, in the latter case the
Court observing that the malice spoken of in the rule announced in
Day v. Woodworth was not merely the doing of an unlawful
or injurious act, but the act complained of must have been
conceived "in the spirit of mischief, or of criminal indifference
to civil obligations."
Page 122 U. S. 610
See also Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway v. Arms,
91 U. S. 489,
91 U. S. 492;
Missouri Pacific Railway v. Humes, 115 U.
S. 512,
115 U. S. 521,
and
Barry v. Edmunds, 116 U. S. 550,
116 U. S.
562-563.
The court in the present case said nothing to the jury that was
inconsistent with the principle as settled in these cases. The jury
were expressly restricted to compensatory damages unless they found
from the evidence that the defendant acted with bad intent and in
pursuance of an unlawful purpose to employ force to dispossess the
other company. The doctrine of punitive damages should certainly
apply in a case like this, where a corporation, by its controlling
officers, wantonly disturbed the peace of the community and by the
use of violent means endangered the lives of citizens in order to
maintain rights for the vindication of which, if they existed, an
appeal should have been made to the judicial tribunals of the
country. That the defendant, within the meaning of the rule holding
corporations responsible for the misconduct of their servants in
the course of its business and of their employment, directed that
to be done which was done is not to be doubted from the evidence,
the whole of which is given in the bill of exceptions. Its
governing officers were in the actual command and directing the
movements of what one of the witnesses described as the "Denver and
Rio Grande forces," which were avowedly organized for the purpose
of driving the other company and its employees, by force, from the
possession of the road in question.
Other questions were discussed by counsel, but they do not in
our judgment deserve consideration. Substantial justice has been
done without violating any principle of law in the admission of
evidence or in the granting or refusing of instructions.
The judgment is affirmed.
