City of Joliet v. Shufeldt

Citations

• 144 Ill. 403

Syllabus

<p>1. Negligence — defective street — efficient cause. Where a horse, while being driven along a street, in consequence of the opening of the bits in its mouth, runs away, without fault on the part of the driver or the plaintiff, whereby the plaintiff is thrown from the vehicle at a place where the street was left in an unsafe condition and injured, neither the running away of the horse nor the defect in the street being alone sufficient to produce the injury, but it is produced by the combination of both, and they become, therefore, in combination, the efficient and proximate cause, in such case the. causal relation is direct between the defective street, occasioned by the negligence or omission of duty by the city, and the injury to the plaintiff, and without any intervening efficient cause.</p> <p>2. If the accident of a team running away, without fault or negligence, would not have caused the injury to the plaintiff, but for a defect in the street, and such defect is the result of carelessness or negligence on the part of the city, it will be liable for the injury.</p> <p>3. Same — injury by the combined result of accident and negligence. If a party, while observing due care for his personal safety, is injured by the combined result of an accident and the negligence of a city or village, and without such negligence the injury would not have occurred, the city or village will be held liable, although the accident be the primary cause of the injury, if the consequences could, with common prudence and sagacity, have been foreseen and provided against by the city.</p> <p>4. The general doctrine is that it is no defense, in an action for injuries, resulting from negligence, that the negligence of third persons, or an inevitable accident, or an inanimate thing, contributed to cause the injury of the plaintiff, if the negligence of the defendant was an efficient cause, without which the injury would not have occurred.</p> <p>5. Same — instruction assuming ordinary acci