206 P. 1085 | Ariz. | 1922
International Avenue, in the city of Douglas, Arizona, lies immediately north of the international boundary line between the United States and the republic of Mexico, and runs in an easterly and westerly direction. In the southern part of said avenue and running in the same direction with it is a large drainage ditch which for a long time had been used or permitted to exist by the appellant city in an open and unguarded condition. A Avenue is a north and south highway in said city and has its southern terminus on International Avenue.
Between 12 and 1 o’clock of the morning of June 5, 1920, the plaintiff was traveling south on A Avenue in an automobile, and upon reaching International Avenue turned to the west. In the north bank of the ditch, about 175 feet west of the intersection of these avenues, there was a hole or excavation caused apparently by the erosion or crumbling of the ditch, so
The facts stated appear from the testimony of plaintiff and are not disputed, and epitomize briefly, but sufficiently, the testimony upon which he obtained judgment against the defendant city for its negligence in maintaining the ditch in an unguarded condition. No question is made that the appellant city was negligent in permitting the ditch to remain in a condition dangerous to travelers on the avenue, and it is conceded that the only legitimate inference from the stranger’s unexplained conduct is that he was negligent in cutting across plaintiff’s path.
Upon these facts the appellant city argues its non-liability for the injury sustained by the appellee, upon the ground that the negligent act of the stranger in driving his car across the path of plaintiff, thereby compelling plaintiff to alter his course, was a new cause which intervened to bring about the injurious result, and, as such new cause was not a consequence of the negligence of the appellant, that .therefore appellant’s conceded negligence was merely a remote
The following language, quoted in the case of Crandall v. Consolidated Tel. etc. Co., 14 Ariz. 322, 127 Pac. 994, from the decision in Christianson v. Chicago etc. Ry. Co., 67 Minn. 94, 69 N. W. 640, is a very clear statement of certain rules of the law of negligence :
“What a man may reasonably anticipate is important and may be decisive in determining whether an act is negligent, but it is not at all decisive in determining whether that act is - the proximate cause of an injury which ensues. If a person had no reasonable ground to anticipate that a particular act would or might result in any injury to anybody, then, of course, the act would not be negligent at all; but, if the act itself is negligent, then the person guilty of it is equally liable for all its natural and proximate consequences, whether he could have foreseen them or not.” Otherwise expressed, “the law is that, if the act is one which the party ought, in the exercise of ordinaiy care, to have anticipated was liable to result in injury to others, then he is liable for any injury proximately resulting from it, although he could not have anticipated the particular injury which did happen. Consequences which follow in unbroken sequence, without an intervening efficient cause from the original negligent act, are natural and proximate; and for such consequences the original wrongdoer is responsible, even though, he could not have foreseen the particular results which did follow.”
In the Crandall case the facts were that the defendant telephone company had strung its wires in too close proximity to the power transmission wires of the Consolidated Canal Company, without protection against their coming into contact with such wires in the event of their breaking or sagging. It ap
It was contended for the telephone company that the injury was due solely to the intervening act of Cuber, and was not caused by the negligence or fault of the company. The court stated in the course of the opinion that it was clear that the combined act of the defendant and Cuber produced conditions that resulted in the injury, and, further, that if the act of Cuber was negligent, the damage resulted from the concurrent negligence of the defendant and Cuber, and the act of each might be counted on as the wrongful cause of the injury, and the parties held jointly or severally liable for such injury. And it was held that the merely negligent act of Cuber was not such an intervening cause as would break the chain of causation brought about by the negligence of the telephone company, and the telephone company was therefore responsible for the whole damage.
The ruling in the Crandall case was followed in Mesa City v. Lesueur, 21 Ariz. 532, 190 Pac. 573, where the negligence of the defendant city in insufficiently tamping down the loose earth excavated from a trench which it had constructed had co-oper
“When the injury proceeds from two causes operating together, the party putting in motion one of them is liable the same as though it was the sole cause. This is one form of a universal principle in the law that he who contributes to a wrong, either civil or criminal, is answerable as doer. And it is immaterial to this proposition whether that to which he contributes is the volition of a responsible person, or of an irresponsible one, or whether it is a mere inanimate force, or a force in nature, or a disease.”
The same principle had been theretofore decided by the territorial court to fix liability upon a railroad company for its negligence in constructing a spur-track, which, coupled with the negligence of the conductor of one of its trains, contributed to an accident to an employee in the service of the company; the court holding that, if the railroad company was negligent in constructing the track, and such negligence contributed to the injury, then such negligence, coupled with the negligence of the conductor, was the proximate cause of such injury, and the company was liable. Gila Valley, Globe & N. Ry. Co. v. Lyon, 9 Ariz. 218, 80 Pac. 337.
Upon a re-examination of the authorities, we see no reason to doubt the correctness of these decisions. See Village of Carterville v. Cook, 129 Ill. 152, 16 Am. St. Rep. 248, and notes, 4 L. R. A. 721, 22 N. E. 14; Louisville Home Tel. Co. v. Gasper, 123 Ky. 1057, 9 L. R. A. (N. S.) 548, and note, 93 S. W. 1057; Pastene v. Adams, 49 Cal. 87; Gonzales v. City of Galveston, 84 Tex. 3, 31 Am. St. Rep. 17, 19 S. W. 284; Lane v. Atlantic Works, 111 Mass. 136;
Speaking of intervening and concurrent causes, the authors of Shearman & Eedfield on Negligence, sixth edition, in section 31, say:
“The causal connection (that is to say, between the first negligence and the injury) must be actually broken, the sequence interrupted, in order to relieve the defendant from responsibility. The mere fact that another person concurs or co-operates in producing the injury or contributes thereto in any degree, whether large or small, is of no importance. If the injuries caused by the concurrent acts of two persons are plainly separable, so that the damage caused by each can be distinguished, each would be liable only for the damage which he causes; but, if this is not the ease, all the persons who contribute to the injury by their negligence are liable, jointly and severally, for the whole damage. It is immaterial how many others have been in fault, if the defendant’s act was an efficient cause of the injury.”
The teaching of these authorities is that one is liable to respond in damages for the proximate results of his negligent act. The proximate cause of an event is that which, in a natural and continuous sequence unbroken by any new, independent cause, produces the event, and without which the event would not have occurred. This connection is broken when a new or subsequent cause intervenes so as to become the sole factor producing the injurious result to the exclusion of the negligence of the first wrongdoer in its operation as an efficient factor therein, but it is not broken by the addition of another factor or cause which merely contributes to the result without superseding the efficient operation of the first
We believe it would be an unwarranted finding of a court or jury to say that the maintenance or toleration of such a patently dangerous condition as this deep ditch in a traveled public highway did not in the circumstances, as an incontestable fact, bring about and partly produce the injury in question. Although the happening of the precise event by which plaintiff was thrown into the ditch could not have been foreseen, the appellant — in the language of the authorities expressing the implication arising from the legal duty to use care — was bound to know that some such injury was likely to occur and to guard against the event which did happen. Certainly the probability of some such occurrence would at once have suggested itself to any person who had thought about the subject at all.
As the appellant was negligent in permitting this ditch to be and remain in the public highway, and as such negligence was unquestionably an efficient, operative, and contributing cause at the time of the injury to produce the result, and as this result followed from appellant’s negligence in a natural and continuous sequence without its being shown that an
Tbe judgment is therefore affirmed.