Purcell v. St. Paul City Ry. Co.

48 Minn. 134 | Minn. | 1892

Gil pillan, C. J.

Appeal from an order overruling a general demurrer to the complaint. From the complaint it appears that the plaintiff was a passenger on one of defendant’s cars running upon its line on Jackson street, St. Paul; that, when the car reached the intersection of that line with the defendant’s cable-car line running on East Seventh street, the persons in charge of it negligently attempted to cross, and did cross, the cable line in front of a then near and rapidly approaching cable' traiff thereon ;| that a collision seemed so imminent, and was so nearly caused, that the incident and attending confusion of ringing alarm bells and passengers rushing out of the car caused to plaintiff sudden fright and reasonable fear of immediate death or great bodily injury, and that the shock thus caused threw her into violent convulsions, and caused to her, she being then pregnant,, a miscarriage, and subsequent illness. The complaint shows a duty on the part of the defendant to exercise the highest degree of car* to carry the plaintiff safely. It also shows negligence in respect to that duty, and, if the negligence caused what the law regards as actionable injury, the action is well brought. Of course, negligence without injury gives no right of action. On the argument there was much discussion of the question whether fright and mental distress alone constitute such injury that the law will allow a recovery for it. The question is not involved in the case. (So it may be conceded that any effect of a wrongful act or neglect on the mind alone will not furnish ground of action. Here is a physical injury, as serious, certainly, as would be the breaking of an .arm or a leg. Does the complaint show that defendant’s negligence was the proximate cause of that injury? If so, the action will, of course, lie. What is in law a proximate cause is well expressed in the definition, often quoted with approval, given in Milwaukee & St. P. Ry. Co. v. Kellogg, 94 U. S. 469, as follows: “The primary cause may be the proximate cause of a disaster, though it may operate through successive instruments, as an article at the end of a chain may be moved by a force applied to the other end, that force being the proximate cause of the movement; or, as in the oft-cited case of the squib thrown in the market place. Scott v. Shepherd, 2 W. Bl. 892. The question always is, was there an unbroken connection be/tween the wrongful act and the injury, — a continuous operation? Did the facts constitute a continuous succession of events so linked together as to make a natural whole, or was there some new and independent cause intervening between the wrong and the injury?” There may be a succession of intermediate causes, each produced by the one preceding, and producing the one following it. It must appear that the injury was the natural consequence of the wrongful act or omission. The new, independent, intervening cause must be one not produced by the wrongful act or omission, but independent of it, and adequate to bring about the injurious result. Whether the natural connection of events was maintained, or was broken by such new, independent cause, is generally a question for the jury. In this case the only cause that can be suggested as intervening between the negligence and the injury is plaintiff’s condition of mind, to wit, her , fright. Could that be a natural, adequate cause of the nervous convulsions ? The mind and body operate reciprocally on_ each other. Physical injury or illness sometimes causes mental disease. A mental shock or disturbance sometimes causes injury or illness of body, especially of the nervous system. Now, if the fright was the natural consequence of — was brought about, caused by — the circumstances of peril and alarm in which defendant’s negligence placed plaintiff, and the fright caused the nervous shock and convulsions and consequent illness, the negligence was the proximate cause of those inju-* Iries. That a mental condition or operation on the part of the one injured comes between the negligence and injury does not necessarily break the required sequence of intermediate causes. If a passenger be placed, by the carrier’s negligence, in apparent, imminent peril, and, obeying the natural instinct of self-preservation, endeavor to escape it by leaping from the car or coach, and in doing so is injured, he may, if there be no contributory negligence on his part, recover for the injury, although, had he remained in the car or coach, he would not have been injured. . The endeavor to escape js not of itself contributory negligence. Wilson v. Northern Pac. R. Co., 26 Minn. 278, (3 N. W. Rep. 333.) In such ease, though there comes, as an intermediate cause between the negligence and injury, a condition or operation of mind on the part of the injured passenger, the negligence is nevertheless the proximate cause of the injury. The defendant suggests that plaintiff’s pregnancy rendered her more susceptible to groundless alarm, and accounts more naturally and fairly than defendant’s negligence for the injurious consequences. Certainly a woman in her condition has as good a right to be carried as any one, and is entitled to at least as high a degree of care on the part of the carrier. It may be that, where a passenger, without the knowledge of the carrier, is sick, feeble, or disabled, the latter does not owe to him a higher degree of care than he owes to passengers generally, and that the carrier would not be liable to him for an injury caused by an act for omission not negligent as to an ordinary passenger. - But when / the act or omission is negligence as to any and all passengers, well 1 or ill, any one injured by the negligence must be entitled to recover S to the full extent of the injury so caused, without regard to whether, | owing to his previous condition of health, he is more or less liable'to ^injury. If the recovery of a passenger in feeble health were to be limited to what he would have been entitled to had he been sound, then, in case of a destruction by fire or wrecking of a railroad car through the negligence of those in charge of-i-t, if_all the passengers but one were able to leave it in time to escape injury, and that one could not because sick or lame, he could not recover at all. The suggestion mentioned would, if carried to its logical consequences, lead to such a conclusion.

Order affirmed. ^

(Opinion published 50 N. W. Rep. 1034.)