Rogers v. Western Union Tel. Co.

• Decision Date: 01 August 1905
• Parties: ROGERS et al. v. WESTERN UNION TELE GRAPH CO.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

51 S.E. 773

72 S.C. 290

ROGERS et al. v. WESTERN UNION TELE GRAPH CO.

Supreme Court of South Carolina

August 1, 1905

Appeal from Common Pleas Circuit Court of Richland County; Purdy Judge.

Action by Bertha A. Rogers and J. E. Rogers against the Western Union Telegraph Company. From order overruling demurrer defendant appeals . Reversed.

Nelson & Nelson, for appellant. E. McC. Clarkson and D. W. Robinson for respondents.

GARY A. J. (after stating the facts).

In section 823 of Joyce on Electric Law, it is said: "The rule established in Hadley v. Baxendale, and which has been continuously asserted and affirmed, is that the damages which a party to a contract ought to recover, in respect to a breach of it by the other, are such as naturally arise from the breach itself, or such as may reasonably be supposed to have been contemplated by the parties when making the contract as the probable result of the breach. And it may be added that the damages must be certain, both in their nature and in respect to the cause from which they proceed. They must not be the remote, but the proximate, consequence of the breach of contract, and must not be speculative or contingent. Again, to continue the rule of the Hadley v. Baxendale case, if the special circumstances under which the contract was actually made were communicated to and thus known by both parties, the damages resulting from the breach of such a contract, which they could reasonably contemplate, would be the amount of injury which would ordinarily follow from a breach of contract under those special circumstances so known and communicated. But, on the other hand, if these special circumstances were wholly unknown to the party breaking the contract, he, at the most, could only be supposed to have had in his contemplation the amount of injury which would arise generally, and in the great multitudes of cases not affected by any special circumstances from such breach of contract; for, had the special circumstances been known, the parties might have specially provided for the breach of contract by special terms as to the damages in that case. This rule is applicable to the contracts of telegraph companies for the transmission of messages."

These principles are recognized in Arial v. Telegraph Co., 70 S.C. 418, 50 S.E. 6, in which the court uses this language: "The statute was not intended to make the company liable in all cases for mental anguish and...