Mosier v. The Board of County Commissioners of The County of Butler
| Decision Date | 11 June 1910 |
| Docket Number | 16,577 |
| Citation | 82 Kan. 708,109 P. 162 |
| Parties | DANIEL MOSIER, Appellant, v. THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF THE COUNTY OF BUTLER, Appellee |
| Court | Kansas Supreme Court |
Decided January, 1910.
Appeal from Butler district court; GRANVILLE P. AIKMAN, judge.
Judgment reversed and case remanded.
SYLLABUS BY THE COURT.
NOTICE--Defective Bridge--Chairman of County Board--Injury to a Traveler. The plaintiff brought an action against a county to recover for injuries occasioned by a defective bridge. Held, that the evidence showing knowledge of the chairman of the board of county commissioners of the defective condition of the bridge was sufficient as against a demurrer.
George J. Benson, and T. A. Kramer, for the appellant.
K. M Geddes, county attorney, and C. A. Leland, for the appellee.
The plaintiff sued to recover for injuries caused by a defective bridge. The court sustained a demurrer to his evidence, and this is the error complained of.
It was a county bridge, and consisted of two steel spans across the Whitewater river, with a thirty-foot approach on the east which was built entirely of wood, with guard rails on either side. The plaintiff, accompanied by his two daughters, was driving over the bridge in a buggy drawn by one horse. It was in the evening, after dark; they had crossed the bridge proper, and were on the approach, when the horse took fright at a pile of stone at the side of the highway and backed some distance against one of the guard rails. The railing was defective; it gave way, with the result that the vehicle, with its occupants, was thrown to the ground, a distance of about twenty feet, and the plaintiff received injuries.
The defendant seeks to sustain the court's ruling upon the ground that the approach where the accident occurred was no part of the bridge. There is nothing substantial in this. Obviously the wooden approach was as much a part of the bridge as the steel structure. It appears from the evidence that if there had been no approach the bridge would have stood at this point twenty feet above the ground, so that, without the approach, the bridge would have been useless.
There is a further contention that the defective condition of the bridge was not the proximate cause of the injury, for the reason that the horse was frightened at the pile of stone in the highway. In support of this the defendant relies upon the well-known principle that if two distinct causes are successive and unrelated in their operation one of them must be the proximate and the other the remote cause. But the principle has no application here, because it is obvious that the two causes were related in their operation. Notwithstanding the frightening of the horse, the injury would not have resulted if the guard rail had not been defective. One reason why guard rails were necessary was the liability that horses might be frightened while on this part of the bridge, resulting in just such accidents.
The principal contention is that the...
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