## Facts

- Jessie Jones went to the Texas & Pacific Railway depot in Millsap, Texas, about 45 minutes before her train, intending to buy a ticket and become a passenger.
- She placed her bundles on a seat in the waiting room and briefly left the depot for about 15 minutes after a friend called her from across the street.
- On returning, Jones found her bundles had been thrown from the waiting room onto the platform.
- Jones asked the station agent’s wife, who was at the ticket window, about the bundles; the wife responded with insulting and abusive language, accused Jones of indecency and theft, and continued the abuse for roughly 10 minutes.
- People on the platform heard the insults and saw the bundles thrown out.
- The station agent was in the ticket office a few feet away, heard or could have heard the exchange, and made no effort to protect Jones or restrain his wife.
- Jones was behaving properly and did nothing to provoke the abuse.
- Jones suffered humiliation and mortification, nervous upset with headache and sickness, crying, pain, and mental anguish.
- A jury awarded Jones $450 in damages.

## Issues

1. Whether a railroad owes an intending passenger in its depot a duty to protect her from insults and indignities occurring on the premises when its agent is present and fails to intervene.
2. Whether damages for humiliation and mental suffering are recoverable in this context absent substantial bodily injury.
3. Whether the trial court’s damages instruction improperly commented on the evidence or misstated the measure of damages.

## Decision

- The Court of Civil Appeals of Texas affirmed the $450 judgment for Jones.
- The railroad could be held liable for the abusive, humiliating treatment inflicted in its depot where its station agent was present and failed to stop or prevent it.
- The jury could consider humiliation, mortification, and mental suffering (and associated physical effects) as compensable damages despite the railroad’s objection that mental suffering required bodily injury.
- The challenged jury instruction was not reversible as an improper comment on the evidence or an incorrect measure of damages.

## Legal Principles

- A common carrier owes persons on its premises in the course of becoming passengers a duty of protection from reasonably preventable insults and indignities.
- A carrier may be liable when its agent has the ability and opportunity to stop abusive conduct toward a passenger or intending passenger on carrier premises but fails to act.
- In actions against carriers for wrongful indignities to passengers or intending passengers, damages may include compensation for humiliation, mortification, and mental anguish, along with physical effects naturally resulting from the conduct, even without substantial bodily injury.

## Conclusion

The court upheld liability and emotional-distress damages where an intending passenger was publicly insulted in a railroad depot and the carrier’s station agent, though present and able to intervene, failed to prevent the indignities.


Tex. & Pac. Ry. Co. v. Jones, 39 S.W. 124 (Tex. Civ. App. 1897)