Garrett v. Louisville & N.R. Co.

• Decision Date: 20 April 1916
• Docket Number: 3 Div. 200
• Parties: GARRETT v. LOUISVILLE & N.R. CO.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

71 So. 685

196 Ala. 52

GARRETT v. LOUISVILLE & N.R. CO.

3 Div. 200

Supreme Court of Alabama

April 20, 1916

Appeal from City Court of Montgomery; Gaston Gunter, Judge.

Action by Mattie Garrett against the Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company, for damages for death of a minor child by drowning. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.

The action is based upon the wrongful death of plaintiff's minor son, for that defendant wrongfully employed him without plaintiff's consent, at a dangerous work, and that death resulted therefrom. The evidence shows without dispute that defendant employed deceased without plaintiff's knowledge or consent, the father of deceased being dead, and put him to work on a barge in the Alabama river, by weaving boughs together and dropping them and staves over the edge of the barge around the base of the piers of the railroad bridge. The current was swift at that point, and the water about 30 feet deep. While the deceased was thus engaged, another employé of defendant, a man named Irving, winked at the other men, and then pushed deceased over the edge of the barge into the deep water, where, in spite of all efforts to rescue him, he was speedily drowned. Deceased was 19 years of age, and appeared to be a grown man and had worked for defendant several months. The barge was 15X20 feet, and on it at this time were 8 or 10 white men and about 15 negroes. At the conclusion of the evidence, the court, at the request of defendant, gave the general charge for defendant, and this ruling is assigned for error.

Hill Hill, Whiting & Stern and R.T. Rives, all of Montgomery, for appellant.

Goodwin & McIntyre, of Montgomery, for appellee.

SOMERVILLE J.

Although judicial decisions are not always harmonious in their application of the principles which determine whether any wrongful act is the proximate and juridical cause of a particular injury, the principles themselves are settled beyond further controversy and a simple statement thereof from the leading authorities will suffice for the purposes of the present case.

"The law, in its practical administration in cases of this kind, regards only proximate or immediate, and not remote, causes, and, in ascertaining which is proximate and which remote, refuses to indulge in metaphysical niceties. Where, in the sequence of events between the original default and the final mischief, an entirely independent and unrelated cause intervenes, and is of itself sufficient to stand as the cause of the mischief, the second cause is ordinarily regarded as the proximate cause and the other as the remote cause." Atchison, etc., Ry. Co. v. Calhoun, 213 U.S. 1, 29 Sup.Ct. 321, 53 L.Ed. 671; Milwaukee, etc., R Co. v. Kellogg, 94 U.S. 469, 24 L.Ed. 256.

"Where two distinct, successive causes, unrelated in operation, to some extent contribute to an injury, it is settled that where there is an intervening and direct cause a prior and remote cause cannot be made the basis for recovery of damages, if such prior cause did no more than furnish the condition, or give rise to the occasion, by which the injury was made possible. It seems to be sound in principle and well settled by authority that where it is admitted or found that two distinct, successive causes, unrelated in their operation, conjoin to produce a given injury, one of them must be the proximate, and the other the remote, cause of the injury, and the court, in passing on the facts as found or admitted to exist, must regard the proximate as the efficient and consequent cause, and disregard the remote cause." Mo. Pac. Ry. Co. v. Columbia, 65 Kan. 390, 69 P. 338, 58 L.R.A. 399.

"Suppose that if it had not been for the intervention of a responsible third party the defendant's negligence would have produced no damage to the plaintiff, is the defendant liable to the plaintiff? This question must be answered in the negative, for the general reason that causal connection between the negligence and damage is broken by the interposition of responsible human action. I am negligent on a particular subject-matter. Another person, moving independently, comes in and, either negligently or maliciously, so acts as to make my negligence injurious to a third person. If so, the person so intervening acts as a nonconductor and insulates my negligence, so that I cannot be sued for the mischief which the person so intervening directly produces. He is the one who is liable. *** For the spontaneous action of an independent will is neither the subject of regular, natural sequence, nor of accurate precalculation by us. In other words, so far as concerns my fellow beings, their acts cannot be said to have been caused by me, unless they are imbeciles or act under compulsion,

or under circumstances produced by me which gave them no opportunity for volition."

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