Green v. Blanton

• Decision Date: 16 September 1987
• Docket Number: No. 1029,1029
• Citation: Green v. Blanton, 362 S.E.2d 179, 294 S.C. 14 (S.C. App. 1987)
• Court: South Carolina Court of Appeals
• Parties: James and Linda GREEN, Appellants, v. Bill BLANTON, d/b/a Bill Blanton's Wrecker Service, Bill Ruppe and Shirley Ruppe, Respondents. . Heard

Page 179

362 S.E.2d 179

294 S.C. 14

James and Linda GREEN, Appellants, v. Bill BLANTON, d/b/a Bill Blanton's Wrecker Service, Bill Ruppe and Shirley Ruppe, Respondents.

No. 1029.

Court of Appeals of South Carolina.

Heard Sept. 16, 1987.

Decided Oct. 26, 1987.

M. Terry Haselden, Faucette, Haselden & Harris, P.A., Spartanburg, for appellants.

Wade S. Weatherford, II, Gaffney, for respondents.

GARDNER, Judge:

James and Linda Green (the plaintiffs) sued defendant Blanton for negligence and defendants Bill and Shirley Ruppe (the Ruppes) for negligence and maintenance of a nuisance. The trial judge directed a verdict for defendant Blanton and, upon trial the jury returned a verdict for the Ruppes. We reverse and remand.

Defendant Blanton is in the wrecker service business. He, through an employee, was employed to remove smoldering cotton from trucks on Interstate 85 near Gaffney, South Carolina. The truck was transporting cotton on I-85 when the cotton caught fire. Defendant Blanton, acting by and through his employees, removed most of the smoldering bales to the county landfill but at 4:30 p.m. of the day in question the landfill closed. Defendant Blanton, with the Ruppes' permission, discarded about 15 bales of smoldering cotton on a lot owned by the Ruppes ¹ and used as a landfill. The cotton continued to smolder; Mr. Green testified that the smoke was so obnoxious that his family had to leave their home, which was near the dump site, to sleep at another place. About thirty days later the dump site caught fire; the resulting soot and smoke seriously damaged the Greens' home.

Mr. Ruppe testified that for a number of years they had allowed people to dump various items including tires, old houses, logs, wood, dirt, stumps and anything else on this lot. Mr. Ruppe admitted that he had encouraged people to dispose of waste there and indeed wanted them to dump all sorts of rubbish to fill in the property. On occasions the debris had caught fire. It is undisputed that the Ruppes had failed to comply with certain hereinafter mentioned regulations of the Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC).

Questions of merit on appeal are whether the trial judge erred (1) in directing a verdict in favor of defendant Blanton, (2) in refusing to charge requested DHEC regulations, and (3) in the jury instruction relating to the law of nuisance.

On appeal from an order granting a directed verdict, this court views the evidence and all reasonable inferences deducible therefrom in a light most favorable to the party against whom the directed verdict was granted; if the evidence as a whole is susceptible of more than one reasonable inference, a jury issue is created and the motion must be denied. Claytor v. General Motors Corporation, 277 S.C. 259, 286 S.E.2d 129 (1982).

There is no need for a detailed review of the facts of this case, nor is citation required for the proposition that all persons are required to use ordinary care to prevent others from being injured or damaged as a result of their acts; ordinary care has been defined as that degree of care which people of ordinarily prudent behavior could be reasonably expected to exercise under the circumstances of a given case. In other words, the care required must be in proportion to the danger to be avoided and the consequences that might be reasonably anticipated.

Superimposed upon the above elementary law of torts is the rule that if one engages in activity involving peril to others to the knowledge of the actor, his negligence while so engaged, whether consisting of acts of commission or omission, which result in damage to another is actionable. The activity of setting, controlling or confining fires is no exception. This is the general law of the land. Benton v. Montague, 253 N.C. 695, 117 S.E.2d 771 (1961); South Eastern and Decennial Digests, Negligence, Key No. 21.

And it is a familiar rule that to establish liability for ones negligent acts, it is not necessary that the person charged with negligence should have contemplated the particular event which occurred, but it is sufficient that he should have foreseen that his negligence would probably result in injury or damage to others. Brown v. National Oil Co., 233 S.C. 345, 105 S.E.2d 81 (1958).

With the above rules in mind, we hold that the plaintiffs adduced sufficient evidence to make a jury issue as to defendant Blanton's negligence and liability for the starting of the fire and the resulting damages...