Note 58 — Chapter II · NEGLIGENT INTERFERENCE (continued 2)
Reading edition
Metropolitan R. Co. v. Jackson, 3 App. Cas. 193; Hyman v. Nye, 6 Q. B. D. 685; Simkin v. London R. Co., 21 Q. B. D. 453; Smith v. Browne, 28 L. R. Ir. 1; Bizzell v. Booker, 16 Ark. 308; Western R. Co. v. Vaughan, 113 Ga. 354; Chicago R. Co. v. Scott, 42 Ill. 132; City v. Cook, 99 Ind. 10; Needham v. Louisville R. Co., 85 Ky. 423; Merrill v. Bassett, 97 Me. 501; Heinz v. Baltimore R. Co., 113 Md. 582; Chenery v. Fitchburg R. Co., 160 Mass. 211; Brick v. Bosworth, 162 Mass. 334; Keown v. St. Louis R. Co., 141 Mo. 86; Teepan v. Taylor, 141 Mo. App. 282; Brown v. Merrimack Bank, 67 N. H. 549; Nashville R. Co. v. Wade, 127 Tenn. 154; Coates v. Canaan, 51 Vt. 131; Fowler v. Baltimore R. Co., 18 W. Va. 579; Schrunk v. St. Joseph, 120 Wis. 223 Accord.
“We do not understand that an employer’s liability for the negligent act of his superintendent can be measured by the latter’s poise of temperament, nor that the character of a given act of the superintendent in respect of negligence can be made to depend upon his excitability or the reverse. It is the duty of a superintendent to do what an ordinarily careful and prudent man would do under the same circumstances, and the employer is liable if he fail to do this and injury results to an employe.” Bessemer Land Co. v. Campbell, 121 Ala. 50, 60.
Also it is erroneous to charge the jury that failure to exercise the care of “an ordinary man under like circumstances” or of “a person under similar circumstances” or “just such as one of you, similarly employed, would have exercised under like circumstances” amounts to negligence. Austin R. Co. v. Beatty, 73 Tex. 592; St. Louis R. Co. v. Finley, 79 Tex. 85; Louisville R. Co. v. Gower, 85 Tenn. 465.