Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Company v. Smith

• Decision Date: 16 December 1912
• Citation: 103 Miss. 150,60 So. 73
• Parties: YAZOO & MISSISSIPPI VALLEY RAILROAD COMPANY v. MRS. M. A. SMITH
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

60 So. 73

103 Miss. 150

YAZOO & MISSISSIPPI VALLEY RAILROAD COMPANY v. MRS. M. A. SMITH

Supreme Court of Mississippi

December 16, 1912

October 1912

APPEAL from the circuit court of Coahoma county, HON. SAM C. COOK Judge.

Suit by Mrs. M. A. Smith against the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Company. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals.

The facts are fully stated in the opinion of the court.

Affirmed.

Mayes &amp Longstreet, for appellant.

The court erred in refusing instruction number four requested by defendant below. This instruction is as follows:

"The court instructs the jury for the defendant that if they believe from the evidence that the plaintiff's throat became sore and that she suffered therefrom, and that the same was caused by the car of the Illinois Central Railroad Company, on which she returned from Batesville to Memphis being cold, they will not allow her any damages therefor, because the jury cannot allow this plaintiff any damages unless the same was the proximate result of a negligent or wrongful act of some agent or employee of the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Company."

Therefore, the jury were allowed to assess damages against the appellant company for appellee's alleged sickness springing from the negligence of the Illinois Central Railroad Company in failing to properly heat its car on which appellee took passage. It was along this line that appellee's case moved, and it was upon this theory that the case was submitted to the jury. It was the ruling of the court that as a matter of law the negligence of gatekeeper Willis was the proximate cause of appellee's sickness produced by the failure of the I. C. R. R. to properly heat its car. We submit that this action of the court was gross, prejudicial and reversible error, as the main injury alleged to have been sustained by appellee was her sickness resulting from her ride on the cold car of the I. C. The question upon which this case turns is the liability of the appellant company for the failure of the I. C. to properly heat its car--was the negligence of the appellant's employee, Gatekeeper Willis, the proximate cause of appellee's sickness. In other words, the case revolves around the question of proximate cause.

As said in the Billingsley case, 56 So. 790: "Proximate cause is a vexed, metaphysical question, but it can safely be said that in order to constitute proximate cause there must be a casual connection between the injury and the negligence complained of," and our contention is that there was no such causal connection as to appellee's sickness. For the delay, pecuniary expense and inconvenience arising from Gatekeeper Willis's alleged mistake we concede that appellee was entitled to damages, but not for her sickness.

Not every intervening cause, we concede, can be regarded as the efficient or proximate cause, and there are also many classes or kinds of intervening agencies. However, our proposition is that as to the illness of appellee resulting from the insufficiently heated car of the I. C., the appellant company is not liable for the reason that the I. C. R. R. Co. was an efficient intervening cause, and the responsibility for such sickness must lie with the I. C. and not with the appellant company.

An examination of the authorities on this phase of proximate cause will disclose, we submit, that there is no conflict, but that all are in harmony. We will make a few quotations on this particular point:

"It is a sound conclusion that where an intervening, distinct, independent and efficient cause breaks a causal relation between the original wrong and the injury, this intervening cause then becomes the proximate cause of the injury, and the remoter cause cannot be made the basis of an action for recovery of damages." White's Supplement to Thompson's Commentaries on Laws of Negligence, section 54.

"If subsequently to the original wrongful or negligent act a new cause has intervened of itself sufficient to stand as the cause of the misfortune, the former must be considered as too remote." 1 Thompson on Negligence, p. 55.

"The connection is usually enfeebled and the influence of the injurious act controlled where the wrongful act of the third party intervenes, and where any new agent introduced by accident or design, becomes more powerful in producing the consequences, than the first injurious act. It is, therefore, required that the consequences to be answered for should be natural as well as proximate." 1 Thompson on Negligence, p. 49, section 47.

"The law will not look back from the injurious consequences beyond the last efficient cause, especially where an intelligent and responsible human being has intervened." 29 Cyc. 499.

The following quotation from the opinion in the case of Fowlkes v. Railway Co., 32 S.E. 464, we find to be widely quoted: "That the defendant was guilty of negligence is conceded, and that it is liable in damages for the direct consequences of that negligence is also conceded. . . . It is not only requisite that damages, actual or inferential, should be suffered, but this damage must be the legitimate sequence of the thing amiss. The maxim of the law here applicable is that in law the immediate, and not the remote, cause of any event is regarded. In other words, the law always refers the injury to the proximate, not to the remote, cause. If any injury has resulted in consequence of a certain wrongful act or omission, but only through or by means of some intervening cause, from which last cause the injury followed as a direct and immediate consequence, the law will refer the damage to the last or proximate cause, and refuse to trace it to that which was more remote. To the proximate cause we may usually trace consequences with some degree of assurance, but beyond that we enter a field of conjecture where the uncertainty renders the attempt at exact conclusions futile. If the wrong and the resulting damage are not known by common experience to be naturally and usually in sequence, and the damage does not, according to the ordinary course of events, follow from the wrong, then the wrong and the damage are not sufficiently conjoined or concatenated as cause and effect to support an action."

In Railway Company v. Columbia, 69 Pa. 338, the court holds that, "Where two distinct successive causes wholly unrelated in operation contribute towards the production of an accident resulting in injury and damage, one of such causes must be the proximate and the other the remote cause of the injury. A prior and remote cause cannot be made the basis of an action for the recovery of damages if such remote cause do nothing more than furnish the condition or give rise to the occasion by which the injury was made possible, if there intervened between such prior or remote cause and the injury a distinct successive, unrelated and sufficient cause of the injury."

In 8 Am. & Eng. Ency. of L., p. 571, it is said: "In the law of damages the proximate cause of an injury may in general be stated to be that act or omission which immediately causes or fails to prevent the injury; an act or omission occurring or concurring with another, where, had it not happened, the injury would not have been inflicted, notwithstanding the latter. Where an efficient producing cause for injuries is found, it will be considered the proximate cause, unless another cause or causes, not incident to but independent of it, are shown to have intervened and produced the injury. The question must always be, therefore, whether there was any intermediate cause disconnected from the primary act and self-operating, which produced the injury; an inquiry to be answered in accordance with common understanding. Where this question can be answered in the affirmative, the independent and intervening cause will be regarded as the proximate cause, and the author of the original act discharged."

However, the law as to intervening agency is modified to this extent that though the negligent act or omission be removed from the injury by intermediate causes and effects, yet if the party guilty ought reasonably to have foreseen the ultimate consequences, such negligence is deemed in law the proximate cause of the injurious effect.

Setting out this principle in more concrete form, 1 Thompson on Negligence, sec. 55, p. 58, says: "If A is guilty of a negligent act which would not have produced the catastrophe but for the subsequent intervening negligence of B not being a result which A might reasonably anticipate, nor against which it was his duty to guard, A will not be responsible for the resulting damages."

The Mississippi Court, in the Wooly case, 77 Miss. 927, quotes with approval the rule laid down in 16 Am. & Eng. Ency. of Law, p. 476 as follows: "In order to warrant a finding that negligence is the proximate cause of an injury, it must appear that the injury was the natural and probable consequence of the negligence, and that it was such as might or ought to have been foreseen in the light of attending circumstances."

In this connection, we call the attention of the court to the case of Railway Co. v. Price, 43 L. R. A. 402. In this case through the negligence of the conductor of a railway company a passenger on its cars had been carried beyond the point of her destination, and she went to a hotel to spend the night. During the night, through the negligence of an employee of the hotel, the lamp exploded and the plaintiff was injured. Says the court in its opinion in this case: "Taking her version of the manner in which she was injured, the injury was occasioned by the negligence of the proprietor of the hotel or his servants in giving her a defective lamp. The negligence of the company in passing her station was, therefore, not the...