Texas & P. Ry. Co. v. Bigham

• Decision Date: 24 December 1896
• Citation: 38 S.W. 162
• Parties: TEXAS & P. RY. CO. v. BIGHAM.
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

38 S.W. 162

TEXAS & P. RY. CO. v. BIGHAM.

Supreme Court of Texas.

December 24, 1896.

Error to court of civil appeals of Second supreme judicial district.

Action by W. R. Bigham against the Texas & Pacific Railway Company. From a judgment of the court of civil appeals affirming a judgment for plaintiff (36 S. W. 1111), defendant brings error. Reversed.

B. G. Bidwell, for plaintiff in error. J. H. Beall, for defendant in error.

GAINES, C. J.

This suit was brought by defendant in error against the plaintiff in error to recover damages for personal injuries, and for injuries to cattle belonging to him, alleged to have resulted from a defective gate to a stock pen of the company. He recovered a judgment in the trial court upon both causes of action, which was affirmed by the court of civil appeals. The facts upon which the recovery was claimed are thus stated by the court of civil appeals in their findings: "On November 25, 1892, the appellee, in accordance with a prearrangement made with the agent of the appellant, a common carrier, for the shipment of his cattle from Merkel to Waxahachie, Texas, had penned the cattle, about 100 head, in the stock pens of the appellant provided by it for that purpose. The gate which admitted entrance into the pen was out of repair, and had been for some months, as the appellant knew. The appliances for fastening it were defective. Its condition was due to the negligence of the defendant company. In order to prevent the escape of the cattle intended for shipment, the appellee was in the act of fastening it by means of a rope which he had secured for that purpose, when the noise of a passing freight train so frightened the cattle as to reduce them to a condition of panic. They plunged towards the gate, and upon it, the one upon the top of the other; and, before the appellee could escape, they hurled him some twenty feet upon the ground, where he fell unconscious from the violence of the contact. * * * But for the defective condition of the gate, the cattle would not have escaped." The petition alleged the facts substantially in accordance with the foregoing statement. Demurrers were interposed thereto, upon the ground that the injuries, both as to the person and the property of the defendant, were not proximately caused by the negligence of the defendant, as alleged. The demurrers were overruled, and exceptions were taken. The plaintiff having recovered upon the trial, the rulings upon the demurrers were assigned as error upon appeal; and, the judgment having been affirmed, they were again assigned in the petition for the writ of error, as grounds for a reversal of both judgments by this court.

The maxim that, "in law, the immediate, and not the remote, cause of any event, is regarded," applies to cases of negligence. The negligence must be the proximate cause of the injury. But the word "proximate" is not happily used in that connection. In ordinary language, a proximate cause is the nearest cause; but, in a legal sense, an act of negligence may be deemed a proximate cause of an injury, although it may not be the last cause in a connected succession of events which have led to a result. It is usually laid down, in cases of negligence, that, in order to constitute the proximate cause of an injury, the injury must be the natural and probable result of the negligent act or omission. Since every event is the result of a natural law, we apprehend the meaning is that the injury should be such as may probably happen as a consequence of the negligence, under the ordinary operation of natural laws. The rule is sometimes put upon the ground that to allow a recovery for injuries resulting from remote causes would lead to intolerable litigation, and this seems to be indicated in Bacon's paraphrase of the maxim quoted above: "It were infinite for the law to consider the causes of causes, and their impulsions one of another. Therefore it contenteth itself with the immediate cause, and judgeth of acts by that, without looking for any further degree." But it seems to us that as applied to the law of negligence, at least, a better ground for the rule is that a party should not be held responsible for the consequences of an act which ought not reasonably to have been foreseen. In other words, it ought not to be deemed negligent to do or to fail to do an act when it was not anticipated, and should not have been anticipated, that it would result in injury to any one. To require this is to demand of human nature a degree of care incompatible with the prosecutions of the ordinary avocations of life. It would seem that there is neither a legal nor a moral obligation to guard against that which cannot be foreseen, and under such circumstances the duty of foresight should not be arbitrarily imputed. "It can hardly be negligent not to provide against what no one can anticipate," says Blackburn, J., in Smith v. Railway Co., L. R. 6 C. P. 14. And again: "If a man fires a gun across a road where he may reasonably anticipate that persons will be passing, and hits some one, he is guilty of negligence, and liable for the...