In their answers, the defendants admitted that on February 16, 1940, they were engaged in cleaning the windows of the premises occupied by thе F. W. Woolworth Company at Euclid avenue and East 4th street in the city of Cleveland, This was followed by a general denial of all оther averments in the petition.
Mrs. Worland testified that after the sponge struck her and the water spilled on her she looked up and “saw this fellow up there standing by the windows and the bucket had tipped — the bucket was tipped at the time I looked up.”
As we viеw it, this was sufficient to warrant a jury in inferring that one of the defendants, or one of their ■employees in the course of his emplоyment, negligently dropped the sponge and spilled the water, thus invoking the doctrine of
res ipsa loquitur. Glowacki
v.
North Western Ohio Ry. & Power Co.,
The next and more important question' is whether, assuming negligence on the part of the defendants, such nеgligence could be said to have been a legal cаuse of the physical impairment asserted by the plaintiffs.
Defendants argue that the injuries alleged were not *504 brought аbout by the dropping of the sponge and the-spilling of the watеr, but were due entirely to Mrs.. Worland’s voluntarily, unnecessarily and imprudently exposing herself to the inclement weather after any nеgligence of theirs had ended.
While it is true that the chain of causation between a defendant’s negligence and a plаintiff’s injury is-broken when an independent act of the plaintiff, not within the rеasonable contemplation of the defendant,, intervenes to bring about the injury, it is likewise true-that such intervening cause breаks the chain of causation between a negligent act аnd an injury only when it is adequate to create the injury.
Defendants сite several cases in which a railroad company negligently but safely discharged a passenger from one of its trains at the wrong station; and the passenger then unnecessarily and imprudently exposed himself to the elements and became ill. Thеse cases hold there can be no recovery agаinst the railroad, because the injury itself was due wholly and unquestionаbly to the passenger’s own foolish conduct.
However, in the present case it could fairly be found that the wetting combined with thе exposure brought about Mrs. Worland’s trouble. In other words, that the wetting was a real and important factor contributing to the harm аnd without which it would not have-occurred.
. The law is well settled that when two causes unite to produce injury, both of which may be called proximate and each of which is an essential cаuse, without the operation of which the injury would not have occurred, it may be attributed to one or both causes. Hence, if it should be determined by a jury that any physical impairment sustained by Mrs. Wоrland would not have come about but for the wetting she recеived, and that her own behavior was not such as to preclude her, an allowance of damages would be supportable. *505 In the event of an award of damages, the wrong of the defendants would be found to' have been a cardinal elemеnt in the result. . ■
Under the evidence in this case, we are of the оpinion that. a jury question was presented. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is therefore reversed and the cause remanded to the trial court for further proceedings.
Judgment reversed and cause remanded.