54 Pa. Super. 649 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1913
Opinion by
In this action of trespass the plaintiff sued to recover damages for the destruction by fire of its cables and wires alleged to have been caused by the negligence of the defendant. The case comes before us by appeal by plaintiff from the court’s refusal to take off the judgment of compulsory nonsuit which was entered on the trial. The ground upon which the court based its decision was that the evidence was insufficient to warrant the jury in finding negligence on the part of the defendant. In testing the correctness of that conclusion, the plaintiff must be given the benefit of every fact and inference of fact, essential to recovery by it, which might have been found by the jury, or rationally drawn by them from the testimony before them. After full and deliberate consideration of the evidence, in the light of this well-settled principle, the case having been twice argued, we are constrained to the conclusion that the case should have been submitted to the jury.
Having stated in brief outline how the fire was oc
Lardner had often worked in the shaft before. He knew the location of the plaintiff’s cables and wires in close proximity to the place where he was working, and also knew of their inflammable condition by reason of the accumulation of grease, oil, and dust upon them. In addition to his admitted knowledge of the location and condition of the wires, it was shown that he was expressly warned by the superintendent • of the building not to take the gasoline furnace into .the shaft.
While the evidence does not show that according to the usages of the trade there was a fixed and unvarying method of making such change in an elevator cable as the defendant had undertaken to make, there was evidence coming from witnesses, whose training and experience made them competent to testify oh the subject, that there was a method of making the change without taking the gasoline furnace into the shaft, and that was by loosening the shackle rod from its fastenings, taking the shackle rod and rope out into the corridor of the building, and there melting the former loose from the latter. It may be, as counsel for defendant argue, that the method adopted by Lardner was the more convenient one;, but it is quite clear that the jury would have been warranted in finding, from the evidence, that the other was not an unusual method, that it was reasonably practicable, and that it was, under all the circumstances, the safer method.
It was said by the learned trial judge, in overruling the motion to take off the compulsory nonsuit: “There was no direct danger to the plaintiff’s property, or to any other property from the mere taking of the furnace into the elevator shaft. The mere presence of the fire in the shaft would ignite nothing and injure nothing.
Upon the subject of proximate cause it has pertinently been said: “It is not the law, that men are responsible for their negligence only to the extent of the injuries which they knew would result from it. If it were, there
The judgment is reversed and a venire facias de novo is awarded.