Piraccini v. Dir. Gen. of Railroads

• Decision Date: 15 November 1920
• Docket Number: No. 45.,45.
• Citation: 112 A. 311
• Parties: PIRACCINI v. DIRECTOR GENERAL OF RAILROADS et al.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

112 A. 311

PIRACCINI

v. DIRECTOR GENERAL OF RAILROADS et al.

No. 45.

Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey.

Nov. 15, 1920.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Appeal from Supreme Court.

Action by Louis Piraccini, administrator of Amelia Piraccini, deceased, against the Director General of Railroads and others. Judgment for defendants, and plaintiff appeals. Reversed and remanded.

The defendant railroad company owned land in Dover on which were erected its signal repair machine shops. The land was not fenced where it abutted a public street except by a guard fence. Adults and children without let or hindrance entered on what is called the playground portion of the property, and crossed the property by a pathway which had been used by the public for over 40 years. School children used it in going to school. On March 25, 1919, the ground was covered with dry grass. About 11 a. m. an employee of the defendant in obedience to orders started a Are near and about the signal repair shop for the purpose of clearing the land of dry leaves. Between 1 and 1:15 o'clock, the decedent, a child about five years old, was discovered not far from the playground on or near the property "all in flames." As a result, she died.

Elmer W. Romine, of Morristown, for appellant.

Frederic B. Scott, of New York City, for respondents.

SWAYZE, J. (after stating the facts as above). Much of the argument was directed to the question whether the child had been invited to use the pathway, and whether she was actually using it in pursuance of the invitation. In the view we take, these questions are unimportant. The case is not one where the liability of the defendant depends on invitation. Their liability grows out of their responsibility for a dangerous agency. The principle as stated by Chief Justice Beasley may well be repeated at length:

"In all cases in which any person undertakes the performance of an act which, if not done with care and skill, will be highly dangerous to the persons or lives of one or more persons, known or unknown, the law, ipso facto, imposes as a public duty the obligation to exercise such care and skill. The law hedges round the lives and persons of men with much more care than it employs when guarding their property, so that, in this particular, it makes, in a way, every one his brother's keeper, and therefore it may well be doubted whether in any suppos-able case redress should be withheld from an innocent person who has sustained immediate damage by the neglect of another in doing an act which, if carelessly done, threatens in a high degree one or more persons, with death or great bodily harm. Such misfeasances, if they result fatally, are indictable crimes; where they inflict particular damage upon individuals they should, it is conceived, be actionable." Van Winkle v. American Steam Boiler Co., 52 N. J. Law, 240, 19 Atl. 472.

A recent application of the principle is in New Jersey Fidelity & Plate Glass Insurance Co. v. Lehigh Valley Railroad Co., 92 N. J. Law, 407, 105 Atl. 206.

Starting with the legal liability for negligence in the case of highly dangerous acts as defined by Chief Justice Beasley for the major premise, the question is whether setting fire to dry grass in a populous town near a pathway and playground frequented by school children may be such an act.

The answer is not doubtful. Always and everywhere since the beginning of civilization with men's discovery of the means of producing fire, it has been regarded as a dangerous as well as a beneficent agency, to be handled with care. Mr. Beaven in his work on Negligence quotes from the Digest on the Aquilian law, a passage from Paulus, part of which may well be translated:

"If a man should set fire to his stubble or his thorns, in order to burn them up, and the flames increase and spread so as to injure the corn or vines of some one else, we have to ask whether it took place through his negligence or his want of skill." D. 9, 2, 30, 3, Monro's translation, vol. 2, 133.

If such was the rule where property was destroyed, much more would it be the rule where life was destroyed. In early English law the rule was much more stringent. He in whose house or chambers a fire originated, whether by negligence or mere accident, was responsible for injuries occasioned by...