Vance v. Virginia Pocahontas Coal Co.

Miller, President:

An action on the case for injuries sustained by plaintiff, an *729employee, from a runaway coal car, operated in defendant’s coal mine. On the trial the court below sustained defendant’s motion to exclude plaintiff’s evidence and direct a verdict in its favor, and thereupon pronounced the judgment of nil capiat complained of.

The act of negligence alleged and relied on, and to which the plaintiff’s evidence relates, was that the coal car in question was defective, out of repair, so as to be a dangerous and unsafe instrument employed in the mine, wherefore it broke loose from the…