Jersey Insurance Company of New York v. Heffron
| Decision Date | 02 March 1957 |
| Docket Number | No. 7357.,7357. |
| Citation | 242 F.2d 136 |
| Parties | JERSEY INSURANCE COMPANY OF NEW YORK, Appellant, v. Charles J. HEFFRON, Jr., Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
William H. Grimball, Jr., and Robert McC. Figg, Jr., Charleston, S. C., for appellant.
R. M. Hollings, Charleston, S. C. (Meyer, Goldberg, Hollings, Lempesis & Uricchio, Charleston, S. C., on the brief), for appellee.
Before SOBELOFF, Circuit Judge, and HARRY E. WATKINS and GILLIAM, District Judges.
In a suit on a policy insuring against direct loss by explosion, the plaintiff alleged that his property was damaged when an explosion, resulting from causes unknown to him, occurred on premises adjoining his, blowing a hole in his wall and showering his dwelling with bricks and debris. The insurance company admitted the damage to the plaintiff's property, but defended on the ground that it did not result from any explosion. According to its version, the property adjoining the plaintiff's simply collapsed, and the plaintiff's house was damaged by falling building materials. As the principal question raised here is whether or not there was sufficient evidence to support the District Judge's finding that the damage was caused by explosion, a somewhat detailed recital of the testimony is unavoidable.
The plaintiff's property is No. 47, on the south side of Queen Street, Charleston, South Carolina, improved by a two-story frame dwelling approximately twenty-five feet wide and fifty feet long. Adjoining it on the west was No. 49 Queen Street, an old brick building. formerly used as a post office garage. This was two stories high, with a frontage of forty feet and a depth of approximately one hundred feet. The second floor rested on joists forty feet in length, extending from the east to the west wall and supported by these walls. The second floor had no center supports. The roof, constructed of wood sheathed with tin, was supported by wooden trusses of mortise and tenon construction, bearing on the same east and west walls. The east edge of the roof overhung the east wall, along which was a gutter. The west edge of the roof was flushed to the west wall, which continued upward above the edge of the roof to form an escarpment, or fire wall. A space approximately ten and one-half feet wide separated the east wall of the old post office garage from the west wall of the plaintiff's house. As the back porch of the plaintiff's house was narrower than the rest of the building, the distance between the west edge of the porch and the east wall of the garage was eighteen feet.
On December 4, 1951, the garage was destroyed amid considerable noise or a train of noises, variously described by witnesses. One declared that it sounded "like a bomb exploding"; others called it a "loud, sharp explosion noise"; "a terrible noise like a roar and then a crash"; "a terrific roar"; "a rumbling, and my first impression was that it was an earthquake"; "a crack-up and rumbling sound and then a large crash."
The north and south walls of the garage were substantially unaffected, but the east and west walls fell or were blown out, so that the west wall went to the west and the east wall, to the east. There is no direct proof as to what happened in 49 Queen Street to cause the damage, and the parties draw conflicting inferences from circumstances most of which are themselves not seriously disputed.
The District Judge found as a fact that the forces involved in the destruction of the garage were such as to propel large pieces of brick, mortar, and other debris to the plaintiff's roof with sufficient force to dent and puncture its tin covering. The Judge thought it significant that this happened despite the fact that the plaintiff's roof is higher than the brick wall of the garage. The gutter along the west edge of the plaintiff's roof, which was likewise higher than the garage wall, was crushed and filled with brick and debris. The sashes and screens of the plaintiff's second-story windows, and the window casing, were loosened near the rear corner of the west side of the house, and the rear half of the west wall of the house, at the first floor level, was completely knocked in, including framing, studs, sheathing, and even interior walls. The plaintiff's house, as an entirety, was moved over on its foundations. The foundation piers were cracked, as was interior plaster, to a width of two inches. Columns supporting the back porch, eighteen feet from the east wall of the garage, were gouged at a point eighteen feet, eight inches above the ground. Railings on the second floor porch were knocked down. Some bricks and debris were found at a distance of eighty-four feet from the nearest garage wall.
It was found as a fact that "At the conclusion of the catastrophe the center point of the east wall of the Old Post Office building was found to have disintegrated down to a point three and one-half feet above the ground, but to the rear or south of the center of the building, the east wall had disintegrated right down to the ground level." It was reasoned by the Judge that "* * * if the east wall of the Old Post Office garage opposite the back porch of plaintiff's residence had fallen in an intact mass from a point at ground level, it would have struck the second floor column of the porch at a point approximately seventeen feet above ground level." The point of impact, as stated above, was eighteen feet, eight inches above the ground.
Two significant findings are as follows:
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