Bowers v. East Tennessee & W.N.C.R. Co.
| Decision Date | 27 May 1907 |
| Citation | 57 S.E. 453,144 N.C. 684 |
| Parties | BOWERS v. EAST TENNESSEE & W. N.C. R. CO. |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
Appeal from Superior Court, Mitchell County; Moore, Judge.
Action by V. B. Bowers against the East Tennessee & Western North Carolina Railroad Company for damages for the alleged negligent burning of plaintiff's hotel building. Plaintiff was nonsuited, and he appeals. Affirmed.
A fire started in a building some distance from plaintiff's hotel, for which defendant railroad company was not responsible. The fire burned several buildings and spread to and burned certain piles of lumber on and along defendant's right of way, from which piles it spread to plaintiff's hotel and destroyed it. Held, that defendant's negligence, if any, in permitting such lumber to be piled on its right of way adjacent to plaintiff's hotel, was not the proximate cause of the burning of the hotel.
Avery & Avery, L. D. Lowe and T. A. Love, for appellant.
S. J Erwin, for appellee.
All the evidence tends to prove that the plaintiff was the owner of a hotel building located to the south of defendant's track which was destroyed by fire on the night of December 23 1903. The fire originated in the Manning & Ellis building some distance from the hotel, and on the north side of the track, and burned that building and several others on the same side of the track before reaching the latter, and there spread to and burned piles of lumber on and along the defendant's right of way, and then spread from the lumber to the hotel and destroyed it. There is a public street in the town of Elk Park which crosses the railroad track between the Manning & Ellis building and the hotel. The former building was situated some little distance to the east of said street and the hotel to the west of it, as we gather from the map filed with the record. A fraternal society--the Odd Fellows--had a supper in the Manning & Ellis building, where the fire originated, on the night on which the fire occurred, but the origin of the fire was unknown, whether accidental or by design; but it was conceded that the defendant was not responsible for the fire, and no testimony was offered tending to show that it was. The plaintiff contends (1) that the defendant negligently suffered large stacks of lumber and quantities of tan bark to be placed by its patrons for shipment on its right of way and partly in the adjacent street, and suffered the same to accumulate; that the fire was communicated to such material and thence to his hotel; (2) that such alleged negligence was the proximate cause of his injury.
It is not necessary that we discuss or determine whether or not it is negligence on the part of a common carrier operating a railroad and engaged in transporting lumber to market to allow or permit its patrons engaged in shipping lumber to deposit such lumber on its right of way and near its track with a view to loading such lumber upon its cars. Assuming, for the sake of the argument only, that such acts constitute negligence, then the question arises: Is this negligence the proximate cause of the destruction of the plaintiff's hotel, the fire having originated in a remote building, without fault on the part of the defendant, either by accident or by the design or negligence of third persons, and having spread thence to several other buildings, one after the other, and thence carried to the lumber and from the lumber to the hotel? We do not think that under the well-established principles of law the defendant can be held proximately responsible to the plaintiff for the unfortunate consequences of such a conflagration. That the burning of the lumber caused the destruction of the hotel and was the remote cause of plaintiff's injury does not subject the defendant to liability. The maxim of the law is, "In jure non remota causa sed proxima spectatur," of which Lord Bacon says: Maxims, Reg. 1, quoted in Broom's Maxims, 216.
No exact rule for determining when causes are proximate and when remote has yet been formulated. But the general principles which govern the determination of the question appear to be quite well settled. In Ramsbottom v. Railroad, 138 N.C. 41, 50 S.E. 448, an oft-quoted case, Mr. Justice Hoke defines the proximate cause, which is an essential ingredient of actionable negligence, as "a cause that produced the result in continuous sequence and without which it would not have occurred, and one from which any man of ordinary prudence could have foreseen...
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