Eagle Hose Co. v. Electric Light Co.

Citations

• 33 Pa. Super. 581
• 1907 Pa. Super. LEXIS 341

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Electric light company — Horse—Proximate and remote cause — Nonsuit.</p> <p>An electric light company which maintains its wires in a public highway is bound to adopt the best precautions against danger, in general use, which experience has shown to be effectual, and to avail themselves of every such known safeguard, or generally approved invention, so as to lessen the danger to persons lawfully using the highway.</p> <p>In an action by a fire engine company against an electric light company to recover damages for the killing of a horse, the case is for the jury where it appears that the defendant maintained an arc lamp on a pole about forty feet distant from a .place where a fire broke out, to which the plaintiff was driving its engine; that the arc lamp was suspended on an arm to which it was attached by a rope; that the fire reached the rope, burnt through it; and that the arc light fell in such a way that one of the horses attached to the engine stepped on a live wire and was lulled.</p> <p>Negligence may be the proximate cause of an injury of which it is not -the sole or immediate cause. If the defendant's negligence concurred with some other event other than the plaintiff’s fault, to produce the plaintiff’s injury, so that it clearly appears that but for such negligence the injury would not have happened, and both circumstances are so closely connected with the injury in the order of events, the defendant is responsible, even though his negligent act was not the nearest cause in the order of time.</p>