Chicago and North Western Railway Company v. Fernando E. Tyler

TALBOT SMITH, Senior District Judge.

The controversy before us arises out of damages suffered by a train of the plaintiff Chicago and North Western Railway Company (hereafter the railroad) due to a washout of its tracks and subsequent derailment of its train.

On the night of June 9, 1971, the area involved suffered, in a short period, an extremely heavy downpour of rain. It was of such intensity that it was characterized by. one witness as the “hardest rain he had ever seen” in a lifetime in South Dakota 1 and by another as one that might occur in a period from once in a hundred years to once…