80 Pa. 373 | Pa. | 1876
delivered the opinion of the court,
Two principal questions arise in this case. The first has relation to the fact of negligence as causing the fire, and the second to the nearness or remoteness of the injury to the negligence causing it. The first three assignments of error belong to the former, and the fourth to the latter.
The second question is of importance, and in view of our own case of Pennsylvania Railroad Co. v. Kerr, 12 P. F. Smith 353, requires a careful examination. After the mail train passed, fire was immediately discovered in one of the cross-ties of the track, which was communicated directly to the grass adjoining, and running into a small heap of dry grass that had been cut and pulled and thrown into a pile, in the fall before, was carried thencé'by means of rubbish and dry grass on the company’s ground, across the roadway to the fence, which was fired, and thence across two grass fields, burning the dry grass in its pathway, until it reached the plaintiff’s fence and woodland, about six hundred feet from the railroad, burning the fence and a large part of the woods. The weather was dry and windy, and the direction of the wind was strongly toward the plaintiff’s fields and woods.
It is contended that the defendants are not liable for the injury to the plaintiff’s fence and woods, on the ground that the injury was too remote from the original cause; and The Pennsylvania Railroad Company v. Kerr is cited as authority for this. We agree with the court below that the question of proximity was one of fact peculiarly for the jury. How near or remote each fact is to its next succeeding fact in the concatenation of circumstances from the prime cause to the end of the succession of facts, which is immediately linked to the injury, necessarily must be determined by the jury. These facts or circumstances constitute the case, and depend upon the evidence. . The jury must determine, therefore, whether the facts constitute a continuous succession of events, so linked together, that they become a natural whole, or whether the chain of events is so broken, that they become independent, and the final result cannot be said to be the natural and probable consequence of the primary cause — the negligence of the defendants. The rule concerning involuntary negligence, as distinguished j¡
These remarks are perhaps sufficient to place this case on a basis of principle. It is also sustained by precedents. The following maybe cited as distinctly and clearly on the point: Kellogg v. Chicago & Northwestern Railway Co., 26 Wis. 224; Clement v. Hannibal & St. Jo. Railroad Co., 12 Mo. 366; Webb v. Rome, Watertown & O. Railroad Co., 49 N. Y. 421, Perly v. Eastern Railroad Co., 98 Mass. 415; Vaughan v. Taff Vale Railway Co., 3 Hurlst. & N. 73. The principles announced in Tent v. Toledo, Peoria & Warsaw Railway Co., 59 Ill. 349, tend in the same direction ; but it is a case more clearly allied in its facts to Penna. Railroad Co. v. Kerr, supra, which it criticises with some acerbity, and an imperfect understanding of the case, and with a little confusion of thought. It was not held in Railroad v. Kerr, that when a second building is fired from the first, set on fire through negligence, it is a mere conclusion of law that the railroad company is not answerable to the owner of the second (59 Ill. 362); or that if a fire is communicated from the locomotive to the field of A., and spreads through his field to the adjoining field of B., A. may be reimbursed by the company, while B. must set down his loss to a remote cause, and suffer in silence (Id. 358).
The determination of the writer of the opinion to cling to the ancient doctrine, that the wanton wrongdoer must take the consequences of his acts, whether measured by one or one hundred thousand dollars, perhaps is forcible. But as wanton injury was no characteristic of the case of.Railroad v. Kerr, his conclusion is somewhat remote. It is quite possible some may not be shocked at the terrible and unforeseen consequences which follow a little act of unconscious negligence, as where a poor washerwoman boiling clothes set fire to the straw of an ico house, which in turn fired another building, and burnt on until the one-fourth of Pittsburg lay in ashes. The mind of Chief Justice Thompson was of a different cast, and it did revolt at following out the consequences of an unintentional, yet legally speaking, negligent act, to a ruin so gigantic. But let us examine the case of Railroad Co. v. Kerr, and it will be found to be free from much of the criticism expended upon it. The facts were undisputed, in the words of Judge Taylor, who tried the cause, were uncontroverted and incontrovertible, and the point made before him was that the plaintiff had no cause of action, for the reason that the alleged negligent burning was
Upon the whole case the conclusion seems to be with the plaintiff below, and the judgment should be affirmed.