Erie R. Co. v. Murphy
| Decision Date | 16 November 1925 |
| Docket Number | No. 65.,65. |
| Citation | 9 F.2d 525 |
| Parties | ERIE R. CO. v. MURPHY. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
Stanchfield, Collin, Lovell & Sayles and Halsey Sayles, all of Elmira, N. Y., for plaintiff in error.
Mortimer L. Sullivan, of Elmira, N. Y., for defendant in error.
Before HOUGH, MANTON, and HAND, Circuit Judges.
HOUGH, Circuit Judge (after stating the facts as above).
The uncontradicted facts adduced by both sides of this controversy presented a situation from which a jury could infer negligence. The case is one of a recognized class "where the circumstances of the occurrence (causing injury) are of a character to give ground for a reasonable inference that, if due care had been employed," what is popularly called an accident would not have happened. Central, etc., Co. v. Peluso (C. C. A.) 286 F. 661; Sweeney v. Erving, 228 U. S. 233, 33 S. Ct. 416, 57 L. Ed. 815, Ann. Cas. 1914D, 905.
It is regrettable that this situation has been so often spoken of as governed by the rule of res ipsa loquitur, for that can hardly be called a rule which depends for existence on a court's view of possible facts; nor is the matter made clearer by concealing the difficulty of definition in a tag of Latin.
Nothing, not even a man, speaks until experience and observation have given it or him power to speak and say something; and the phrase really means that what metaphorically speaks is experience, and experience that leads observing judges to hold that reasonable laymen may infer negligence from facts which experience teaches do not follow due exercise of care and skill. The standard illustration of the so-called rule is a boiler explosion, and since experience teaches observers that steam boilers, well made and properly cared for, do not explode without warning, the inference is justified that an exploding boiler failed either in construction, upkeep or management. Rose v. Stephens, etc., Co. (C. C.) 11 F. 438; The Rambler (C. C. A.) 290 F. 791.
But observation must rely on experience confidently to hold this, no court would have announced such doctrine if the engine that 100 years ago pulled the first train on the Stockton & Darlington road had exploded; nor was there place for it, had one of the first gasoline explosion engines that took to the open road in competition with each other in 1894 similarly behaved.
But now there are 30 years of experience with gasoline engines of many kinds and under all conditions of use and misuse, and it has become common knowledge that such apparatus, made with ordinary care and managed with ordinary skill, does not either explode or burst into flame. Hence we can draw the same inference from the facts here shown as have long been drawn from an exploding steam boiler.
An inference is not legally the same thing as a presumption, though both...
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