Torrans v. Texarkana Gas & Electric Co.

• Citation: 115 S.W. 389
• Parties: TORRANS v. TEXARKANA GAS & ELECTRIC CO.
• Decision Date: 16 November 1908
• Court: Supreme Court of Arkansas

115 S.W. 389

TORRANS v. TEXARKANA GAS & ELECTRIC CO.

Supreme Court of Arkansas.

November 16, 1908.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Miller County; Jacob M. Carter, Judge.

Action by Elizabeth F. Torrans against the Texarkana Gas & Electric Company. From a judgment for defendant on a directed verdict, plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

Appellant was a milliner in the city of Texarkana, Ark. The store she occupied was 80 feet long, 25 feet wide, and 16 feet from floor to ceiling. Appellee was a corporation engaged in the manufacture, distribution, and sale of gas in Texarkana. Appellant employed appellee to install two are lamps in her store. These depended from the ceiling. One was placed in the rear end about 12 feet from the rear end wall, and midway between the side walls east and west. The other was placed in the front end. The lamps were supplied with gas by a pipe which entered from the front, and ran along the side of the front end wall to the ceiling, then along the center of the ceiling over the lamps. The lamps hung about six feet below the ceiling, and were connected with the gas pipe above by a pipe which made an elbow at the ceiling. Each lamp had three burners which were supplied with gas by feeders. A pilot light which was designed to burn continuously was connected with each lamp. The pilot light burned with a flame about a half inch high. The lamps were lighted by pulling a chain which opened a valve to the gas pipe, and were extinguished by also pulling a chain which closed the valve. A meter was connected with the gas pipe which measured the flow of gas, showing the amount consumed. On the 14th of September, 1907, the day the lamps were put up, parties in the store could not light the lamps, and the agent of the gas company came and lighted them with a taper. Again Monday night following (the 16th) the parties in the store could not light the lamps, and again the agent of the gas company came and lighted them with a taper. He said: "Your lights are all right." The lamps were not lighted any more until the succeeding Saturday night (21st). That night the lamps were lighted without any trouble. The trouble about lighting the lamps was on the previous nights. The lights burned Saturday night from about 7 till 9 o'clock, and had burned about the same time the previous nights when they were lighted. Sunday morning about 9:30 o'clock, September 22d, a fire occurred in appellant's store. Parties in proximity to the building at the time first discovered the fire by the smoke that came from the building. There was no noise of any explosion.

Those first in the building, members of the fire department, discovered a little fire in the back part of the store and near the west wall. A considerable hole in the ceiling had burned out there, and there were evidences of where the fire had burned up the west wall through the shelving. The policeman and the chief of the fire department and some of the firemen who were the first in the building testified that they first discovered the fire in the ceiling next to the west wall; one witness saying that he was one of the first to get there, that it seemed that the fire caught back on the floor and got up in the ceiling. Goods or merchandise were burning eight or ten feet from the wall in the south west corner. The chief of the fire department said they pulled down the ceiling "where the fire was, and cut another hole for the purpose of getting their heads up through there to see where the fire was spreading." "There was, of course, no fire where we cut the other hole. The second hole was cut right above this arc light." The firemen substantially corroborate the testimony of the chief as to the place where the fire was first discovered, and the condition that obtained when they first reached the building, and as to what was done by them after they arrived there. One of them stated: "There was no fire at the place where we pulled the ceiling down in the center. The ceiling, though, had been burned between that joint and the west wall."

Appellant testified that, when she reached her store after the alarm of fire, "she found it crowded with people, and, as it seemed to her a foot deep in water, she found the firemen were playing water all up in the ceiling around the rear lamp. The fire was out. It was all black, smoking, charred, and burning, and the ceiling all around the lamp in the back end of my store was burned. The lamp was pulled down from the ceiling. The ceiling was charred and the lamp was pulled down on the floor, and the pipe lay against the work table." When asked what was the condition of the ceiling above the lamp, she replied: "It had dropped down on the table and floor, and was simply a charred mass." She was asked: "Assuming that the fire started at the rear lamp, what direction did it take?" and answered: "It went towards the west wall. The fire burned to the wall between me and Nasons' [west wall]. It burned from the lamp to the wall, that I know." She further testified that her work table was right under the lamp, that it was full of goods, and that these were destroyed, and that the goods were destroyed along the way to the west wall. Witnesses on behalf of appellant who examined the store after the fire, some of them on the day of the fire and others a day or two afterwards, testified substantially that the ceiling was burned from where the rear lamp was suspended clear over to the west wall. One of the witnesses testified: "I did not see the fire. I do not know that the flame traveled toward the west wall, but I judge that it did. I found the ceiling pretty badly burned near the place where the split fitting had been on the ceiling, then westward towards the wall of the building, and my recollection is that it burned more in that direction than it did right where the fitting was. Appellant testified that on Saturday night before she was burned out on Sunday morning, when she was in the act of closing the store for the night, she went back and tried the rear lamp, which had attracted her attention during the week by flaring up so high that she thought the lamp was lit. She had reference to the pilot light that was kept burning during the whole week. The pilot light burned up brighter when she noticed it. Witnesses detected the odor of escaping gas in the workroom on Saturday afternoon before the fire. After the fire the pipe that connected the rear lamp with the gas pipe on the ceiling was tested by plumbers, and they discovered a leak in the pipe at the elbow where it was joined on to the other pipe at the ceiling. It was a slit in one of the fittings, and when the gas was turned on, and a match applied, it burned a blaze about a quarter of an inch high, or, as one of the witnesses said, "the flame was about half that of an ordinary match." The employé of the appellee who put up the lamps testified: "I turned on the gas, burned off the mandrel, and tested the pipe to see if there was any leak anywhere. I held a match all around the joints that I made in the line, and, if there had been any leak anywhere, it would have caught on fire. I did not find any leak. I put the L on that pipe in Mrs. Torrans' store. There was no crack or split in it then. I painted this pipe, and did not see any split. If there was anything broken about it, I did not find it." The partition between the workroom and storeroom lacked about five feet of reaching the ceiling. There were several broken panes of glass in the back window to the workroom. There was an open flue on the west wall about opposite the are lamp.

The testimony of experts who were familiar with the properties of water gas, the kind used in this building, was substantially as follows. "That when water gas emitted into air will mix in a proportion which is less than 9 per cent. volume and comes in contact with a match or spark there is no action, but, when the percentage of water gas mixed with air is more than 9 per cent. and less than 50 per cent., then it will explode very violently. When the percentage of water gas is more than 55 per cent....