Hatch v. Globe Laundry Co.

• Decision Date: 12 March 1934
• Citation: 171 A. 387
• Parties: HATCH v. GLOBE LAUNDRY CO.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

171 A. 387

HATCH

v. GLOBE LAUNDRY CO.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

March 12, 1934.

Exceptions from Superior Court, Cumberland County.

Action by Rufus P. Hatch against the Globe Laundry Company. Finding for plaintiff, and defendant brings exceptions.

Exceptions overruled.

Argued before PATTANGALL, C. J., and DUNN, STURGIS, BARNES, THAXTER, and HUDSON, JJ.

Clement F. Robinson and Forest E. Richardson, both of Portland, for appellant.

Frank H. Purinton, of Portland, for appellee.

THAXTER, Justice.

In this action the plaintiff seeks to recover for personal injuries caused, as he alleges, by the defendant's negligence. The case was heard by the presiding justice with a right reserved by both parties to except in matters of law. He found for the plaintiff, and the defendant filed exceptions, which are now before us.

The circumstances of the accident, as set forth by the pleadings and established by the evidence, are; peculiar. There is no serious dispute as to what happened. On the 23d day of June, 1933, one Small, an employee of the defendant, parked a truck of the defendant on Lincoln street in Portland, while he went to a house to deliver a package of laundry. The truck, with emergency brake set, was on the left side of the street, headed downhill on quite a grade. The presiding justice found that the front wheels were turned away from the curb. There is no direct evidence on this point, but a reasonable inference can be drawn from what subsequently happened that the driver did not take the precaution of turning the wheels toward the sidewalk. The truck was electrically operated, of slow speed, but powerful. There were no gears, and all that was necessary to do to start it was to move a small wheel, which controlled a rheostat. This wheel, which turned easily, was located on the steering post, and, with the left side of the truck toward the side of the street, was readily accessible to any one, who might step on the running board from the sidewalk. There was a circuit breaker, which consisted of an oblong piece of metal or key inserted in a slot between two contact points. If this were pulled out, power could not pass to the motor, even though the rheostat might be opened. Although it was perfectly simple to remove this key, Small testified that he never did so, except when he left the car in the garage at night. The truck was low and had no doors. Deering avenue, an important highway, intersected Lincoln street a short distance below the point where the truck was stopped, and beyond Deering avenue was the main thoroughfare of Forest avenue. Other cars were parked on the sides of the street in front of the truck. As Small entered the house with his laundry, he noticed children playing on the same side of the street, although, as he says, not in the immediate vicinity of the truck. He was in the house about four minutes according to his estimate. Almost immediately, however, two boys four and five years old, who were playing nearby, got into the truck, turned the wheel controlling the rheostat, until the full power from the batteries was thrown into the motor; and, in spite of the fact that the emergency brake remained set, the car started down the hill with the children in it The plaintiff, who was seated on the porch of a house across the street, seeing their predicament and realizing the danger to them and to other persons lawfully on the highway, dashed out, jumped into the moving truck, and attempted to stop it. Unacquainted with the operation of an electric vehicle, he was unaware that the power was on, but thought that the emergency brake had been released and that the car was coasting downhill. His attempts to put more pressure on the brake were unavailing, and the car continued on its course. The children saved themselves by jumping off. Deering avenue, with traffic moving across it in front of him, was but a hundred and fifty feet away; and, in order to avoid what seemed to him an inevitable accident to himself and to others, he turned the truck from the street into an open space between two houses. In going over this rough ground, he was thrown off and injured. The truck finally stopped, when it struck a tree.

The plaintiff contends that the defendant's driver was negligent in leaving the truck as he did with the opportunity so readily to start it open to young children, who were near at hand. The defendant claims that the act of the children was an intervening and a proximate cause of the accident, for which the driver of the truck was in no way responsible. The exceptions to specific findings of the presiding justice all merge into this general question, and the issue before us is whether there is any evidence to support the ruling below. Chabot & Richard Co. v. Chabot, 109 Me. 403, 84 A. 892.

The universal rule is that if the defendant is to be held answerable in damages to the plaintiff, the negligence must be the proximate cause of the injury suffered. To lay down a general definition of "proximate cause," which will furnish a solvent for all cases, is, however, well-nigh impossible. Each case presents its own problem. Page v. Bucksport, 64 Me. 51, 18 Am. Rep. 239; Fairbanks v. Kerr, 70 Pa. 86, 10 Am. Rep. 664. The most usually cited rule is that the injury must be the natural and probable consequence of the negligence. Marsh v. Great Northern Paper Co., 101 Me. 489, 502, 64 A. 844. But even this formula has its limitations and exceptions, as is pointed out by Judge Smith in an article in 25 Harv. L. Rev. 103, 115. As he shows, a wrongdoer may in some instances be liable for a probable consequence because it was foreseeable, even though it may not have occurred in the ordinary course of nature. This phrase, however, does furnish a reasonable guide for the solution of the vast majority of cases. It is not necessary that injury in the precise form suffered should have been foreseen; it is only essential that, viewing the occurrence in retrospect, the consequences appear to flow in unbroken sequence from the negligence. Marsh v. Great Northern Paper Co., supra, page 502 of 101 Me., 64 A. 844; Palsgraph v. Long Island R. R. Co., 248 N. Y. 339, 344, 162 N. E. 99, 59 A. L. R. 1253; Dalton v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., 241 Mass. 400, 135 N. E. 318.

It is sometimes said that the independent act of a third person intervening between the wrong complained of and the injury is sufficient to break the chain of causation. Leavitt v. Bangor & Aroostook Railroad Co., 89 Me. 509, 520, 36 A. 998, 36 L. R. A. 382. In many instances this is true, but there are innumerable cases where it is not. Such rule undoubtedly had its genesis in the language of the court in the famous "Squib Case." Scott v. Shepherd, 2 W. Bl. 892, 1 Smith Leading Cases, 797. A lighted squib was thrown into a market house and fell on a stand of one proprietor, who instinctively threw it off, and it fell on the stand of another, who likewise threw it. It then struck the plaintiff, exploded, and put out his eye. The court held the one who first threw it responsible. The opinion suggests that the intervening acts were done under compulsion, instinctively, and that if a free agent had intervened, the result would have been different. Applied to the facts of the particular case, the language is of course correct, but a glance at the cases shows that it is not universally applicable.

In O'Brien v. J. G. White & Co., 105 Me. 308, 74 A. 721, the plaintiff was employed as a lineman by a contractor, who was building a transmission line. Through the negligence of an employee of a power company, which had nothing to do with the construction work, a current of electricity was permitted to escape over the wire on which the plaintiff was working. The defendant was held liable for its negligence in failing to protect the plaintiff from the consequence of the intervening act of the third party.

In Luedeke v. New York Central & H. R. R, Co., 164 App. Div. 104, 149 N. Y. S. 525, a trespasser in a railroad yard opened the throttle of a locomotive left unattended on a side track. It ran out on the main line, and collided with another locomotive operated by the plaintiff's intestate, who was killed. It was held a question for the jury whether the defendant should have taken precautions against the commission of such intervening wrongful act.

In Lane v. Atlantic Works, 107 Mass. 104, cited by our court with approval in a number of cases, the declaration alleged that the defendant left a truck loaded with iron on a street in Boston; that the iron on said truck was carelessly placed and rolled oft injuring the plaintiff. The evidence showed that children were accustomed to play in the street A boy twelve years old called to the plaintiff, who was a child of about seven, to come over and see him move the truck. The plaintiff did so, and the other boy moved the tongue sideways so that the truck tilted and the iron rolled off and injured the plaintiff. The trial court ordered a verdict for the defendant. This ruling was held erroneous, for the court said it was a question for the jury whether the occurrence was one which should have been reasonably apprehended. If so, the negligence of the older boy in moving the cart w*ould not prevent a recovery even though it contributed to the result. The case later came before the court again, 111 Mass. 136, on exceptions by the defendant after a verdict for the plaintiff. In sustaining the verdict the court said, pages 139, 140: "The act of a third person, intervening and contributing a condition necessary to the injurious effect of the original negligence, will not excuse the first wrongdoer, if such act ought to have been foreseen. The original negligence still remains a culpable and direct cause of the injury. The test is to be found in the probable injurious consequences which were to be anticipated, not in the number of subsequent events and agencies which might arise."

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