“Some time ago suit was instituted in Waco, Texas, against the M–K-T Railroad by a woman alleging an injury by reason of an electrical shock received while in a signal tower belonging to the defendant.
I enclose herewith a copy of an Answer Actually Filed by the Railroad’s Attorney. I think he treats a delicate subject cleverly, and it apparently served its purpose, because I have heard that the case was never tried.”
I’ve been working on the railroad takes on a whole new meaning in this Answer from the files of the lawyer father of one of our lawyer readers.
“Answering further, if need there be, this Defendant railroad Company would reveal to the Court that in truth and in fact the Plaintiff, Mrs. Hattie Beatty, for several nights prior to the occasion of which she now complains had strolled by the signal tower in question and one each occasion persistently propositioned this defendant’s employee at said tower, one Dockery, to engage with her in an ancient and popular pastime.
That the said Dockery is an old and trusted employee, a man of over sixty winters with snow in his hair but with summer in your heart; that the faint odor of Hoyt’s perfume touched his delicate nostrils and the full painted lips and rouged cheeks of the modern young Aphrodite brought back youthful dreams to his aging head. Although the season was fall time, the sap began to rise his erotic soul as in romantic Springtime of Yore. It was on the unlucky night of Friday the Thirteenth of September, A.D. 1934 that the said Dockery finally succumbed to Plaintiff’s feminine allurements, the price being one dollar, in advance.
That in all truthfulness the only mechanical contrivance or unique lever about the said tower in which the plaintiff expressed any interest whatsoever was that which hung on the person of said Dockery. (emphasis added)
That this Defendant Railroad Company had not equipped its said signal tower for any such passionate purposes…”
Fee, fie, fiddle-e-i-o!