Pennsylvania Railroad Co. v. Hope
| Decision Date | 07 February 1876 |
| Citation | 80 Pa. 373 |
| Parties | Pennsylvania Railroad Co. <I>versus</I> Hope. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Before AGNEW, C. J., SHARSWOOD, MERCUR, GORDON, PAXSON and WOODWARD, JJ.
Error to the Court of Common Pleas of Chester county: Of January Term 1876, No. 9.
W. MacVeagh and W. Darlington, for plaintiff in error, cited Pennsylvania Railroad Co. v. Kerr, 12 P. F. Smith 353; Fairbanks v. Kerr, 20 Id. 91; Ryan v. N. Y. Central Railroad Co., 35 N. Y. 210.
W. E. Barber, for defendant in error, cited Smith v. London & S. W. Railroad Co., Law Rep. 5 C. P. 98; Vaughan v. Taff Vale Railroad Co., 3 Hurlst. & N. 679; Flynn v. San Francisco & St. Jo. Railroad Co., 40 Cal. 14 (6 Am. R. 595); Clement v. Hannibal & St. Jo. Railroad Co., 53 Mo. 366 (14 Id. 460); Fent v. Toledo, P. & W. Railroad Co., 59 Ill. 349 (Id. 13); Kellogg v. Chicago & N. W. Railway Co., 26 Wis. 223 (7 Id. 69); Perley v. Eastern Railroad Co., 98 Mass. 414; Webb v. Rome, W. & O. Railroad Co., 49 N. Y. 420; Ins. Co. v. Tweed, 7 Wall. 45; Pittsburg v. Grier, 10 Harris 65; Scott v. Hunter, 10 Wright 192; McGrew v. Stone, 3 P. F. Smith 436; Fairbanks v. Kerr, 20 Id. 90.
Two principal questions arise in this case. The first has relation to the fact of negligence as causing the fire, and the second to the nearness or remoteness of the injury to the negligence causing it. The first three assignments of error belong to the former, and the fourth to the latter.
The court submitted to the jury the question of actual negligence. This was proper. The complaint is not that negligence is not a fact to be determined by them, but that the evidence of it was too weak, while the testimony of the defendant was strong and pointed, that their engine was in good order, well supplied with the best spark arrester, and was carefully and skilfully managed. It is true that the defendants made out a strong case, but there was such evidence of the fire having been kindled by the engine on the defendants' roadway, and carried thence into the fields of the plaintiff, by the dry grass cut and pulled up and piled with other rubbish upon the defendants' roadway, as tended to contradict the evidence of the defendants, strong as it seemed to be. The plaintiff's own testimony, as to how the fire kindled and spread, was corroborated by several witnesses. Hence it became a question of veracity and probability, which could not be withdrawn from the jury. The jury found the fact of actual negligence.
The second question is of importance, and in view of our own case of Pennsylvania Railroad Co. v. Kerr, 12 P. F. Smith 353, requires a careful examination. After the mail train passed, fire was immediately discovered in one of the cross-ties of the track, which was communicated directly to the grass adjoining, and running into a small heap of dry grass that had been cut and pulled and thrown into a pile, in the fall before, was carried thence by means of rubbish and dry grass on the company's ground, across the roadway to the fence, which was fired, and thence across two grass fields, burning the dry grass in its pathway, until it reached the plaintiff's fence and woodland, about six hundred feet from the railroad, burning the fence and a large part of the woods. The weather was dry and windy, and the direction of the wind was strongly toward the plaintiff's fields and woods.
It is contended that the defendants are not liable for the injury to the plaintiff's fence and woods, on the ground that the injury was too remote from the original cause; and The Pennsylvania Railroad Company v. Kerr is cited as authority for this. We agree with the court below that the question of proximity was one of fact peculiarly for the jury. How near or remote each fact is to its next succeeding fact in the concatenation of circumstances from the prime cause to the end of the succession of facts, which is immediately linked to the injury, necessarily must be determined by the jury. These facts or circumstances constitute the case, and depend upon the evidence. The jury must determine, therefore, whether the facts constitute a continuous succession of events, so linked together, that they become a natural whole, or whether the chain of events is so broken, that they become independent, and the final result cannot be said to be the natural and probable consequence of the primary cause — the negligence of the defendants. The rule concerning involuntary negligence, as distinguished from wanton or intentional injury, is expressed in the maxim, causa proxima non remota spectatur. The rule is undisputed, but the difficulty lies in its application arising sometimes from the barrenness or uncertainty of the evidence, and sometimes from the intrinsic difficulty in the nature of the circumstances. In all or nearly all cases, the rule for determining what is a proximate cause is, that the injury must be the natural and probable consequence of the negligence, and that this might and ought to have been foreseen under the surrounding circumstances. These are the circumstances of the particular case, and from the nature of the thing must be referred to the jury. All the court can do is to aid the jury by pointing to the relations of the facts. The jury must determine whether the original cause, that is, the negligence, is, by continuous operation, so linked to each successive fact, as that all may be said to be one continuous operating succession of events, in which the first becomes naturally linked to the last, and to be its cause, and thus to be within the probable foresight of him whose negligence ran through the succession to the injury. In determining this relation, it is obvious we are not to be governed by abstractions, which, in theory only, cut off the succession. Abstractly each blade of grass or stalk of grain is distinct from every other; so one field may be separated from another by an ideal boundary, or a different ownership, or it may be by a real but combustible division line. But we cannot say that therefore the succession fails. It is at this point the province of the jury takes up the successive facts and ascertains whether they are naturally and probably related to each other by a continuous sequence, or are broken off or separated by a new and independent cause. The practical knowledge and common sense of the jury applied to the evidence steps in to determine whether the injury is the real proximate result of the negligence, or, by reason of intervening and independent causes must be regarded as too remote, and the result not within the...
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