Nelson v. Southern Railway Co.

Nelson, a civil engineer who had been in the employ of the Southern Railway eleven years, was directed to make a survey in one of its yards. While doing so he walked on the main track between the rails where he had seen others walk. As he stepped upon a cross-tie, a small V-shaped piece of it one and a half inches by six, being rotten, slivered off under his weight. His foot slipped down between the ties where the ballast was five or six inches below the top of .the tie; and stumbling, he fell and dislocated his knee. The defect in the tie could have been discovered by sounding with an iron…