DeRousseau v. Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Railway Co.

On appeal the defendant contends that as a matter of law the excessive speed of the train, which was traveling eighty to ninety miles an hour, was not a cause of the accident. The jury found that such speed was causal and the trial court has upheld that finding. Ruling on motions after verdict, he said:

“The engineer testified that when he was approaching two hundred feet east of the crossing he saw the lights of the truck approaching from the south along the highway. He fixed the distance of the truck from the south track at seventy-five feet when he first observed it, and its speed at twenty…