Newark Elec. Light & Power Co. v. Ruddy

• Decision Date: 14 November 1898
• Citation: 62 N.J.L 505,41 A. 712
• Parties: NEWARK ELECTRIC LIGHT & POWER CO. v. RUDDY.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

41 A. 712

62 N.J.L 505

NEWARK ELECTRIC LIGHT & POWER CO.

v. RUDDY.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Nov. 14, 1898.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Error to circuit court Essex county; Child, Judge.

Action by Thomas J. Ruddy, by next friend, against the Newark Electric Light & Power Company. Judgment for plaintiff. Defendant brings error. Affirmed.

The plaintiff, a child of eight years, picked up from the sidewalk of a public street the end of a broken wire that trailed from one of the poles on which it should have hung suspended, and sustained severe Injury through electric shock. The wire was an electric light wire, under the control of the defendant. This writ of error removes a Judgment, on verdict, in favor of the plaintiff in a suit brought to recover damages because of alleged negligence, in the premises, of the defendant. No explanatory or exculpatory evidence was offered in defense.

Aigicd June term, 1898, before DIXON, LUDLOW, and COLLINS, JJ.

R. V. Lindabury, for plaintiff in error.

Samuel Kalisch, for defendant in error.

COLLINS, J. (after stating the facts). The counsel for the plaintiff in error very properly limited his argument to the question of whether or not the facts proved warranted the submission of the case to the Jury on the point of defendant's negligence. That question, now presented by exceptions to the refusal of the court to nonsuit the plaintiff or to direct a verdict in favor of the defendant, was, I think, correctly decided by the trial Judge. The defendant was, by law, permitted to suspend along a public street a wire so charged with electricity as to be dangerous to the public if it should break and fall upon the street. This privilege entailed upon it a very high degree of care to maintain the wire intact. It was permissible to presume a lack of exercise of such care when the proof showed the wire broken and trailing on the sidewalk under conditions that rendered possible serious injury to persons lawfully there. Unexplained, the presence on the highway of the charged and broken wire, and the fact of injury received therefrom, justified an inference of negligence in the defendant in whose control and management it was. Such an inference has been judicially permitted even when the wire that broke received the electricity from a wire on which it fell. Haynes v. Gas Co., 114 N. C. 203, 19 S. E. 344. It appeared, indeed, that the wire was covered with an insulating substance, of which but a small portion at the broken end was gone, and, if the plaintiff had not chanced to touch this small exposed portion of the wire, he would have received no shock. Still, as it is plainly possible that any break of such a wire may remove the insulation sufficiently to lead to such a result, the defendant, if chargeable at all, must accept that consequence. It happened that the plaintiff was able to produce no witness who had noticed that the wire was down except within five or ten minutes before the plaintiff took it up, and it was argued that so short a space of time forbade any presumption of negligence in not removing it. This argument is beside the point The plaintiff was not bound to prove when the wire came down. Its presence at the time and place of injury sufficed. Had it appeared affirmatively that the wire had but just fallen, the presumption of negligence would have been simply narrowed to the breaking of the wire. Only in case it had appeared that the breaking was without negligence would the question of reasonably prompt removal have arisen.

We may assume that such a wire, of proper size and quality, skillfully set up and inspected with sufficient care and frequency, will not spontaneously break, and, on the other hand, that undue strain or improper use may weaken such a wire, and cause its fracture. There remains the possibility of disruption caused by the elements or outside interference. Here lay the stress of the defendant's argument. It was contended that the plaintiff was bound to eliminate every such cause by disproving its existence; but to this argument I cannot yield assent. It is impracticable to frame a rule of general application on a subject so concrete as that Involved in a Jury's right to say that a particular occurrence speaks in itself of negligence. It was well said by Mr. Justice Garrison in Bahr v. Lombard, 53 N. J. Law, 233, 21 Atl. 190, and 23 Atl. 167, that "the quantum of proof which a plaintiff must give in order to draw from the defendant explanatory evidence must with certain limits be...