Pennsylvania Railroad Co. v. Kerr

• Decision Date: 06 July 1870
• Citation: 62 Pa. 353
• Parties: The Pennsylvania Railroad Company <I>versus</I> Kerr.<SMALL><SUP>1</SUP></SMALL>
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

62 Pa. 353

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company versus Kerr.¹

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

May 20 and 21, 1870.

July 6, 1870.

May 20th and 21st 1870.

Before THOMPSON, C. J. READ, AGNEW and SHARSWOOD, JJ. WILLIAMS, J., absent

Error to the Court of Common Pleas of Huntingdon county: No. 25, to May Term 1870.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

W. Dorris and J. G. Miles, for the plaintiff in error.—The question involved in this case is a difficult one, but it must be admitted that there must, of necessity, be some limit of compensation in cases where positive injury results from an alleged wrong. No human power can trace all the consequences of a wrongful act, and if they could be estimated, the means of no individual or corporation would, in many instances, be adequate for their compensation.

If the injury complained of here had been the result of an act of carelessness by an individual, this suit would never have been brought. No such action has ever been sustained in our courts. An attempt was made, in this state, in the case of McCully v. Clarke & Thaw, 4 Wright 399, but it was unsuccessful. We are at all times exposed to such accidents, through the carelessness of our children or domestics. We can guard against them, so far as our own homes are concerned, by insurance, but we have no insurable interest in the property of our neighbors; and if the rule is to be laid down as contended for by our opponents, we are liable at any time to be ruined through the negligence of those in our employ, against which no forethought could guard. This is forcibly illustrated in the masterly opinion of Justice Hunt, in Ryan v. N. Y. Cen. Railroad Co., 35 N. Y. 210.

The injury here was involuntary, not the voluntary, wilful act of the servants of the defendants. Can there be a recovery of damages except for the loss of the warehouse? The destruction of the warehouse was the direct consequence of the alleged negligence. The burning of the tavern, 39 feet from it, and the stable, 80 feet off, was the remote consequence, caused by a concurrence of other accidental circumstances — the warm, dry day, the strong wind, the degree of heat and the combustible materials of the buildings, over all which the defendants had no control, and for which they are not responsible. The burning of the tavern and stable was not the natural, necessary or usual result of fire. A house, nearer to the warehouse than either the tavern or stable, was not injured.

Would it be right to hold the Pennsylvania Railroad Company responsible for the spreading of the fire caused by the force and power of the wind? This court has already decided the question. "There are often very small faults which are the occasion of the most serious and distressing consequences. Thus, a momentary act of carelessness set fire to a little straw, and that set fire to a house, and by an extraordinary concurrence of very dry weather and high winds, with this fault, one-third of a city (Pittsburg) was destroyed. Would it be right that this small act of carelessness should be charged with the whole value of the property consumed?" Lowrie, J., in Morrison v. Davis & Co., 8 Harris 176.

If the liability of the railroad company is to be extended beyond the destruction of the warehouse to the wash-house, and then to the tavern house, and then to the two houses across the alley, and then to the stable across the turnpike, upon what principle of law or common sense will the owner of the fence, burned by the sparks a quarter of a mile off, be prevented from recovering damages?

We conceive that the only safe rule is to limit the claim for damages to the immediate result of the injury, This is the rule which has been adopted in New York. The question is fully discussed in the case already cited of Ryan v. The New York Central Railroad Co., 35 N. Y. 210.

The question involved in this case is one of general importance. Locomotives are constantly running, day and night, through the majority of the towns and cities of the state, and some fixed rule should be established as to the extent of liability in case of damage by fire. If it should be decided that the party through whose carelessness the fire is caused, is responsible only for the direct and immediate consequences, then owners of property along the line of railroads will, by insurance, guard against loss. If, however, railroad companies, on the mere suggestion of negligence, to a jury, are to suffer for all the consequences of fire, the result will be that they must cease to run through towns and cities. We trust the court will adopt the rule laid down in our sister state of New York, as the best solution of this troublesome question.

R. M. Speer and R. B. Petrikin.—The plaintiffs in error rely solely upon the case of Ryan v. The N. Y. Central Railroad Co., 8 Tiffany 210, a case which, it is respectfully submitted, is against all the analogies of the law; is wholly unsupported, if not by fair inference, repudiated in England and in this state; and is in direct conflict with the case of the Louisiana Mutual Insurance Company v. Tweed, 7 Wallace 44.

This case rules ours. Similar facts appeared in Piggot v. The Eastern Counties Railway Company, 54 E. C. L. R. 230.

The railroad company in this case, we contend, was clearly liable for the burning of the hotel and its contents, if their destruction was, under the circumstances, the natural and inevitable result of the negligent burning of the warehouse; and whether it was or not, was a question for the jury.

It is a familiar principle that a man is answerable for such consequences of his unlawful acts as are natural and may be foreseen by ordinary forecast: Scott v. Hunter, 10 Wright 194-5.

When we are engaged in an act which the surrounding circumstances indicate may be dangerous to others or their interests, and when the event whose concurrence is necessary to make an act injurious is one which we can readily see may occur under these circumstances, and unite with the act to inflict an injury, we are culpable if we do not take all the care which prudent circumspection would suggest to avoid the injury: McGrew v. Stone, 3 P. F. Smith 442.

Where the injury comes from the exclusive negligence of one party, he cannot shield himself from liability by calling it an accident: Beach v. Parmeter, 11 Harris 196. The maxim causa proxima non remota spectatur means but this: McAfee v. Crofford, 13 Howard 447.

In the language of Gibson, C. J., in Lehigh Bridge Co. v. L. C. & N. Co., 4 Rawle 25, "The ground work of the common law principle seems to be that some degree of negligence is imputable in every case of accidental fire produced by human means; and it is universally just that a loss shall be borne by him who contributed to it."

In McCully v. Clark & Thaw, 4 Wright 406, the action was case for loss by fire, through the negligence of defendants; and Strong, J., says, "It is plain that what is such a measure of care is a question peculiarly for the jury." In this case defendants' boat burnt, then their warehouse, and then their coal, from which plaintiff's warehouse was burnt. Same principle affirmed in Lack. & B. Railroad v. Doak, 2 P. F. Smith 380.

The maxim, sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas, applies with peculiar propriety to this class of cases: Bell v. McClintock, 9 Watts 120.

The application of the maxim, causa proxima non remota spectatur, is often very difficult. The books contain no exact rule to determine what is a remote and what a proximate cause: Pittsburg City v. Grier, 10 Harris 65.

The Illinois courts have substantially ruled this question in our favor: Bass v. Chi. B. & Q. Railroad Co., 28 Ill. R. 17.

And at common law our action clearly lies: Filliter v. Phippard, 11 Adol. & Ellis 347; 2 Y. & Jer. 391; Mayne on Dam. 44.

The sentence from Lowrie, J., 8 Harris 176, cited by plaintiff in error, is a mere dictum.

Is it too much to ask this court to follow this long line of decisions, instead of the unsupported and solitary decision of Hunt, J.?

The opinion of the court was delivered, July 6th 1870, by THOMPSON, C. J.

It has always been a matter of difficulty to determine judicially, the precise point at which pecuniary accountability for the consequences of wrongful or injurious acts, is to cease. No rule has been sufficiently defined and general as to control in all cases. Yet there is a principle applicable to most cases of injury which amounts to a limitation. It is embodied in the common law maxim, causa proxima non remota spectatur — the immediate and not the remote cause is to be considered. Pars. on Cont., Vol. III., p. 198, illustrates the rule aptly by the supposititious case of debtor and creditor, as follows: "A creditor's debtor has failed to meet his engagements to pay him a sum of money, by reason of which, the creditor has failed to meet his engagement, and the latter is thrown into bankruptcy and ruined. The result is plainly traceable to the failure of the former to pay as he agreed. Yet the law only requires him to pay his debt with interest. He is not held for consequences which he had no direct hand in producing and no reason to expect. The immediate cause of the creditor's bankruptcy, was his failure to pay his own debt. The cause of that cause was the failure of the debtor to pay him, but this was a remote cause, being thrown back by the interposition of the proximate cause, the non-payment by the creditor of his own debt." This, I regard, as a fair illustration of what is meant in the maxim, by the words "proxima" and "remota." See also notes, same volume, p. 180.

In Harrison v. Berkley, 1 Strobh. (S. C. Rep.) 548, Wardlaw, J., indulges in some reflections on this point worth referring to in this connection. "Every incident," says he, "will, when carefully examined, be found to be...