Frost v. Berkeley Phosphate Co.

Citations

• 42 S.C. 402
• 26 L.R.A. 693
• 20 S.E. 280
• 1894 S.C. LEXIS 58

Syllabus

<p>1. Charging Juries — Lawful Use. — In instructing the jury that defendant would be liable to plaintiff for injury resulting to plaintiff's property from defendant’s unreasonable and unlawful use of a phosphate factory on its adjoining land, without declaring what was a reasonable and lawful use, the trial judge erred in submitting, a question of law to the jury.</p> <p>2. Lawful Business — -Injury to Others. — If the owner of land uses it for the prosecution of a business from which injury to his neighbor’s property will necessarily or probably ensue, he is liable for damages so resulting, even though he may have used reasonable care in the prosecution of such business — as, in this case, a phosphate factory generating deleterious gases and vapors.1</p> <p>3. Ibid. — Ibid.—Other Causes. — The trial judge erred in charging the jury, that “if the injury is in part the result of vapors and in part the result of other causes, the verdict must be for defendant, unless the testimony establishes that the injury would not have resulted except for the vapor charged as causing the alleged injury.” Such charge was erroneous, or at least misleading, the rule being that he who does an injury is liable for the damages caused thereby, even if the party injured has also sustained injury from other causes.</p> <p>4. Charging Juries — Proof of Negative. — Moreover, this, charge imposed upon plaintiff the burden of proving a negative.</p>