Jones v. Finch

• Decision Date: 20 December 1900
• Parties: JONES ET AL. v. FINCH
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

29 So. 182

128 Ala. 217

JONES ET AL. v. FINCH

Supreme Court of Alabama

December 20, 1900

Appeal from circuit court, Mobile county; William S. Anderson Judge.

Action by Richard A. Finch against Jones & Hooks. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendants appeal. Affirmed.

This was an action brought by the appellee, Richard A. Finch against Jones & Hooks, a partnership composed of George A Jones and A. Fletcher Hooks. After an amendment was sustained to the original complaint, the plaintiff amended his complaint so as to read as follows: "Plaintiff claims of defendant two hundred dollars, for that heretofore, to wit on the 15th day of February, 1899, the defendants, through their servants and employés, negligently threw snow against or upon a wire that was suspended over a wire charged with electricity in one of the public streets in the city of Mobile, and thereby caused it to break from one of its fastenings, and come in contact with said charged wire, and to hang in a position to be liable to come in contact with any animal passing along said street, and to be dangerous to such animal; and plaintiffs' mule, while being driven upon said street, came in contact with said wire, and was thereby killed, to plaintiff's damage as aforesaid." To this complaint the defendants demurred upon several grounds, which were substantially as follows: (1) That the authority of the servants performing the act complained of was not sufficiently alleged; (2) because the plaintiff does not show that the defendants knew that their negligence had resulted in creating the dangerous condition, and therefore that they were guilty of negligence in not moving the dangerous wire; (3) because it does not show that the electrical current with which the wire was negligently charged was such as to reasonably produce the injury which it did produce; (4) that the injury complained of was not the approximate result of the negligence on the part of the defendants in breaking the telephone wire so as to cause it to fall across the trolley wire, and to hang down into the street. This demurrer was overruled. The defendants then pleaded the general issue, and a special plea setting up the contributory negligence of the plaintiff, in that the driver of the mule that was killed saw, or by reasonable diligence could have seen, the wire hanging down in the street, lying across the said trolley wire, and that, therefore, said driver could have known, by the exercise of reasonable care that it was dangerous and hazardous for him to...