Anderson v. Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie Railway Co.
| Decision Date | 17 September 1920 |
| Docket Number | 21,855 |
| Parties | JACOB ANDERSON v. MINNEAPOLIS, ST. PAUL & SAULT STE. MARIE RAILWAY COMPANY AND OTHERS |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Action transferred to the district court for St. Louis county to recover $2,016.50 for destruction of plaintiff's property by fire started from defendant's engines. The facts are stated in the opinion. The case was tried before Dancer, J who at the close of the evidence denied defendants' separate motions for directed verdicts and plaintiff's motion for a directed verdict on the question of liability and a jury which returned a verdict for $2,162.83. From an order denying their motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdict or for a new trial, defendants appealed. Affirmed.
Amendment of pleadings -- discretion of court.
1. The amendment of pleadings is a matter which lies almost wholly in the discretion of the trial court, and its action will not be reversed except for a clear abuse of discretion. Considerations properly influencing the exercise of such discretion are the probability of the opposite party having been misled, the manner in which evidence, to which an amendment relates, came into the case, the scope of the amendment, and the stage the action has reached.
Amendment of complaint after verdict.
2. There was no abuse of discretion in allowing an amendment to the complaint after verdict in a railroad fire case, where the defense was that plaintiff's property was destroyed by fires of unknown origin, and plaintiff's evidence in rebuttal tended to show that defendant was responsible for such fires in addition to one originally alleged to have destroyed the property.
Special instruction to jury.
3. There was no contradiction of the rules laid down in the court's general instructions to the jury in a special instruction given on the following day in response to a question asked by the jury. The later instruction stated the law correctly, was applicable to facts which the evidence tended to show, and was addressed to a subject which had not been distinctly referred to in the general instructions.
Request of jury for further instruction -- notice to counsel.
4. The court is not obliged to notify counsel when the jury asks for additional instructions, but it is customary to do so and the custom is to be approved.
New trial because of improper remarks of counsel.
5. There was no error in denying a new trial for improper remarks by counsel in addressing the jury.
Railway -- liability for fire because of unusual weather conditions.
6. The fact that a prolonged drought and a wind of extraordinary violence contributed to the spread of a railroad fire which destroyed plaintiff's property does not relieve the railroad company from liability. Such weather conditions are not new causes intervening between the original wrongful act and the final injurious result, of such a nature as to be the proximate or efficient cause of the destruction of the property.
Railway -- liability for fire when independent concurring cause is an act of God.
7. If fire, wind and weather are concurring causes of the destruction of property, and its destruction might reasonably have been anticipated as a consequence of the fire, and would not have occurred without it, liability follows. That an independent concurring cause is what is termed an act of God does not alter the rule.
Railway -- statutory liability -- independent of any act of negligence.
8. G.S. 1913, § 4426, virtually makes railroad companies insurers against damage caused by fires set by their engines and entirely eliminates the question of negligence.
Railway -- liability when two fires unite.
9. A railroad company cannot escape liability for a fire started by one of its engines by showing that the fire united with another of no responsible origin and that plaintiff's property was destroyed by the combined fires, if it appears that the railroad fire was a material element entering into the destruction of the property.
Liability of Director General of Railroads for fire.
10. The liability of the Director General of Railroads is not limited to actions brought solely to enforce common-carrier liabilities by virtue of the provisions of section 10 of the Federal Control Act. He may be joined with a railroad company as defendant in an action brought to recover damages caused by a railroad fire.
John L. Erdall, H. B. Fryberger, W. A. Hayes and H. B. Dike, for appellants.
Clayton J. Dodge, Hugh J. McClearn, and Devaney & McGrath, for respondent.
This is a fire case brought against the defendant railway company and the Director General of Railroads. For convenience, we shall refer to the railway company, throughout this opinion, as the defendant. Plaintiff had a verdict. The appeal is from an order denying a motion in the alternative for judgment notwithstanding the verdict or for a new trial. The complaint alleged, that early in August, 1918, sparks from one of defendant's locomotive engines set a fire on or near the right of way, and that this fire spread until it finally reached plaintiff's land, where it destroyed some of his property.
The answer was a general denial followed by an allegation that, if plaintiff was damaged by fire, the fire was not due to any act of defendant, was of unknown origin, and, by reason of extraordinary weather conditions, became a huge conflagration.
The reply put these allegations in issue.
Plaintiff's case in chief was directed to proving that in August, 1918, one of defendant's engines started a fire in a bog near the west side of plaintiff's land; that it smoldered there until October 12, 1918, when it flared up and burned his property shortly before it was reached by one of the great fires which swept through northeastern Minnesota at the close of that day.
Defendant introduced evidence to show that on and prior to October 12 fires were burning west and northwest of and were swept by the wind towards plaintiff's premises. It did not show how such fires originated, neither did it clearly and certainly trace the destruction of plaintiff's property to them.
By cross-examination of defendant's witnesses and by his rebuttal evidence, plaintiff made a showing which would have justified the jury in finding that the fires proved by defendant were started by its locomotive on or near its right of way in the vicinity of Kettle river.
After plaintiff's evidence in rebuttal had been put in, the jury were excused to enable defendant's counsel to confer, who later announced they had decided to rest without offering additional evidence. Each of the parties then moved for a directed verdict. Both motions were denied. In making his motion, plaintiff's counsel stated that it was his position that there was no evidence tending to show that any other fire than the bog fire, or fires set by defendant in the vicinity of Kettle river, destroyed plaintiff's property. The Kettle river fires were the subject of much of the testimony received. They started west or northwest of plaintiff's land several days prior to October 12.
Numerous special instructions were requested. One of defendant's was that plaintiff had predicated his cause of action upon the bog fire; that, if he failed to establish that cause of action, he could not recover, even though the jury should find that other fires referred to in the evidence were started by defendant's locomotives and contributed to the burning of his property. This request was denied.
In instructing the jury, the court said in part:
then it is liable.
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Toxic apportionment: a causation and risk contribution model.
...thus normally single and indivisible.") (36) See discussion infra part II. (37) Restatement (Second) of Torts [sections] 433A (1965). (38) 179 N.W. 45 (Minn. 1920). (39) Id. at 46. (40) Id. at 49. (41) Id. (42) While Anderson is not a toxic torts case, fire certainly bears many of the same ......