64 Vt. 144 | Vt. | 1891
Prior to the passage of the Act of 1880, towns were liable for damages that arose from the insufficiency or want of repair of their highways and bridges. By No. 62 of the Act of the Legislature of that year their liability was restricted to damages that arose from the insufficiency of bridges of not less that eight feet span. Act. No. 13, Laws of 1882, upon which this action was brought, enlarges the scope of the Act of 1880 and extends that liability to include damages caused by means of the insufficiency or want of repair of culverts and sluices which towns are bound to maintain.
Bridges, culverts and sluices form a part of the highway in which they are situated, and the liability of towns for damages, caused by means of their insufficiency, is continued by the present law for the obvious reason that they are more dangerous than the other portions of highways — defects in them often being of such a character as not to be perceptible to the traveler in passing over them — while towns are absolved from liability for damages occasioned by defects in all other parts of their highways.
The plaintiffs evidence tended to show that he was injured at a point in the highway five rods distant from the culvert in question; that the culvert was insufficient in not being large enough to carry off the water that collected in the ditch, and that in consequence the water set bach and its action made the hole in the road which was the immediate cause of the accident.
If the defendant town is liable for damages caused-by this defect in its highway it would have been liable had the defect been one hundred rods or at any other distance from the culvert, provided it could have been shown that the insufficiency or want of repair of the culvert was the primary though remote cause of
Judgment affirmed.