Martin v. North Star Iron Works
| Citation | 18 N.W. 109,31 Minn. 407 |
| Parties | Peter Martin v. North Star Iron Works |
| Decision Date | 14 January 1884 |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Appeal by defendant from an order of the district court for Hennepin county, Young, J., presiding, refusing a new trial after a verdict of $ 1,000 for plaintiff.
Order affirmed.
Fred Hooker and F. B. Hart, for appellant, cited Ryan v. N. Y Cent. R. Co., 35 N.Y. 210; Pennsylvania R. Co. v Kerr, 62 Pa. St. 353; Fent v. Toledo, etc., Ry Co., 59 Ill. 349; Milwaukee & St. Paul Ry. Co. v Kellogg, 94 U.S. 469; Beach v. Ranney, 2 Hill, 314; Marble v. City of Worcester, 4 Gray, 395; Holly v. Boston Gas-Light Co., 8 Gray, 123; Brown v. Milwaukee & St. Paul Ry. Co., 22 Minn. 165; Folsom v. Town of Underhill, 36 Vt. 580; Gribble v. City of Sioux City, 38 Iowa 390.
Merrick & Merrick, for respondent.
OPINION
The defendant caused to be piled a large number of smoke-stacks, boilers, and other material along-side of and very near the track used by the Minneapolis Eastern Railway Company, on or along River street, in the city of Minneapolis. The plaintiff was employed in signaling railroad trains, and for that purpose was stationed in a tower standing on posts beside the track, and about 100 feet distant from the pile of smoke-stacks, boilers, etc. A train of cars coming along, one of them, by reason of the proximity to the track of said pile of smoke-stacks, etc., caught and became attached to, and pushed along the surface of the ground, one of the smoke-stacks, against the stairway leading up into the tower, careening the tower in such manner as apparently to endanger the life of plaintiff, then employed in it signaling trains, and he, to escape, leaped from the tower to the ground, and thereby was injured. To recover for such injury this action is brought. The trial below resulted in a verdict for the plaintiff. The jury found, of course, that it was negligence in defendant to pile the smoke-stacks, boilers, etc., in the manner in which they were piled, so near the track, and we do not understand that any exception is taken here to that finding. The questions made here are: Was there negligence as to the plaintiff? If so, was it the proximate cause of the injury? Was there contributory negligence on the part of plaintiff?
The first of these was, under the circumstances, certainly a question for the jury. If piling the material near the track was a negligent act, it was negligence not only as to the railroad company, whose property and trains might be endangered thereby, but also as to all persons who might probably be put in danger from its probable consequences. If the material was so piled as to create a danger, such as an ordinarily prudent person might foresee, that the material would be caught and pushed along in a dangerous manner, so piling it was an act of negligence as to all who might usually be within the reach of the consequences that might be apprehended. It is none the less so because the railroad company was more likely than they to suffer from it. It was for the jury to say whether an ordinarily prudent person would have foreseen that so piling the material made liable to happen the very things that did happen, to wit, that a passing train should catch and push or carry the material against the tower, so as to endanger any one stationed in it.
That defendant's negligence was not the proximate cause of the injury is claimed from the rule that where an independent, efficient, wrongful cause intervenes between the original wrongful act and the injury ultimately suffered, the former and not the latter is deemed the proximate cause of the injury. It is claimed that negligence of the railroad company intervened between that of defendant and the injury to plaintiff, and that but for such negligence the injury would not have happened.
The imputation of negligence to the...
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