12 Mo. 120 | Mo. | 1848
delivered tbe opinion of the court.
This proceeding was founded on the statute to prevent the firing of woods, marshes and prairies. The statute is very plain, and scarcely admits of misconstruction. It declares that whoever wilfully sets on fire a prairie, marsh or woods, and that fire occasions damage to another, shall forfeit a specified penalty. It is also provided that this penalty shall not be exacted where a person is burning up any thing on his own farm and the fire accidentally escapes to an adjoining prairie or woods.
The facts of the present case were these : The defendant put out fire in the prairie outside of his field fence, and the wind being high, it spread rapidly and consumed the fences and grain stacks of two or three of his neighbors. That such a case comes within the statute is clear enough; but proof was allowed to be introduced to show that the land where the fire was set out, belonged to the defendant, and that he was in the habit of throwing his stock fodder over the fence upon the ground where the fire was started. This evidence was totally irrele
We do not wish it to be inferred that we would confine the word “farm,” as used in the statute, exclusively to enclosures. Cases might, no doubt, be put where a farmer would not be responsible for unintentionally firing the woods or prairie, by setting out fire outside of his enclosures. In clearing timbered land, fires are set out to burn up the brush and roots and log heaps before the fence is built, and it would be readily admitted that if this was the sole design of the fire, the farmer would not be answerable, if it accidentally escaped into an adjoining prairie or woods. Other instances might be suggested, but we think there is no difficulty in distinguishing all such cases from the one against which the statute is aimed.
We shall reverse the judgment, because evidence was admitted calculated to mislead the jury.
The other judges concurring, judgment reversed and the case remanded.