Leoni v. Reinhard

• Decision Date: 08 October 1937
• Docket Number: 2
• Citation: 194 A. 490,327 Pa. 391
• Parties: Leoni et al., Appellants, v. Reinhard
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

194 A. 490

Leoni et al., Appellants, v. Reinhard

327 Pa. 391

No. 2

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

October 8, 1937

Argued May 27, 1937

Appeal, No. 2, May T., 1937, from judgment of C.P. Dauphin Co., June T., 1935, No. 422, in case of Sparto Leoni et al v. William Reinhard. Judgment affirmed.

Trespass for personal injuries.

The opinion of the Supreme Court states the facts.

Affidavit of defense raising questions of law sustained and suit dismissed, opinion by HARGEST, P.J. Plaintiffs appealed.

Error assigned was order sustaining affidavit of defense and dismissing suit.

Judgment affirmed.

Wm. S. Bailey, with him J. Paul Rupp, of Bailey & Rupp, for appellants.

Maurice Metzger, of Metzger & Wickersham, with him Ralph Behney, for appellee.

Before KEPHART, C.J., SCHAFFER, MAXEY, DREW, LINN, STERN and BARNES, JJ.

OPINION

MR. JUSTICE BARNES:

The question presented by this appeal is whether the plaintiff has stated a good cause of action. The minor plaintiff was injured by the explosion of unslaked lime. The statement of claim avers that defendant's truck was carrying a load of such material on a state highway, near Swatara Station, in Dauphin County, during the afternoon of April 22, 1935. As the vehicle passed the minor plaintiff, a child twelve years of age, who was walking along the highway, a piece of unslaked lime fell from the truck and was picked up by him. He placed it in a bucket of damp earth and fish worms he was carrying, and almost immediately it exploded, causing the loss of his right eye, and impairing the vision of the left one.

The plaintiff alleges that defendant was negligent in driving the truck overloaded with unslaked lime upon the highway, and in permitting lime to fall thereon. In an affidavit of defense raising questions of law, the defendant averred that the statement set forth no cause of action, asserting that unslaked lime is not of itself a dangerous substance, and that the injuries complained of did not result directly and proximately from the alleged act of defendant. The court below sustained the affidavit of defense and dismissed the suit. This appeal is from the decree so entered.

In order to hold defendant liable for the injuries sustained by plaintiff it must be found that the defendant breached a duty of care owing to plaintiff, thereby producing the injuries for which the plaintiff seeks to recover damages. An act cannot be held harmful or negligent unless it can reasonably be foreseen that the doing of the act is attended with such probabilities of injury to another that a duty arises either to refrain from the act altogether, or to do it in such manner that harm does not result. It is well settled that conduct is negligent only if the harmful consequences thereof could reasonably have been foreseen and prevented.

This principle is clearly stated in Venzel v. Valley Camp Coal Company, 304 Pa. 583, at page 590: "Liability for negligence depends on antecedent probability, not the mere possibility, of harmful results therefrom. The general test of liability is whether the injury could be foreseen by an ordinarily intelligent person as the natural and probable outcome of the act complained of; the law does not require the parties to go beyond this in their relations with each other: Rugart v. Keebler-Weyl Baking Co., 277 Pa. 408; Hoag & Alger v. Lake Shore and Michigan Southern R.R. Co., 85 Pa. 293; Bruggeman et al. v. City of York, 259 Pa. 94; Kosson et al. v. West Penn Power Co., 293 Pa. 131." See Restatement of the Law of Torts, Sections 284, 289, 290 and 291. As we said in Nirdlinger v. Am. Dist. Tel. Co., 245 Pa. 453, 460, "Where, however, the chain is so broken that the events and facts become independent of each other, then the result cannot be said to be the natural and probable consequence of the primary cause. . . . The law regards those consequences as remote, and therefore not actionable which are produced by the intervention of human agency, or the voluntary act of a person over whom the defendant has no control, and his act no influence." See Marsh v. Giles, Shields & Co., 211 Pa. 17; Fehrs v. McKeesport, 318 Pa. 279. This is true because the consequences arising from the intervention of such independent and uncontrolled agencies are not within the range of prudent foresight.

We need not consider whether unslaked lime is a dangerous material, nor need we weigh its potentially harmful characteristics. We can take notice of the fact that it is widely used in the preparation of mortar and plaster and when so utilized is often stored in exposed places adjacent to building operations. It is also employed in agricultural areas as a fertilizer, and has many other general uses, which apparently are attended by no grave danger either to the persons immediately concerned or to the public at large: White v. Roydhouse, 211 Pa. 13; Beetz v. City of Brooklyn, 41 N.Y.S. 1009. However, the question of the inherent qualities of unslaked lime is not of materiality in this case, because it is clear that the injury to this minor plaintiff was directly attributable to a chain of independent and unforeseeable circumstances.

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