Green v. West Penn Railways Co.

Citations

• 246 Pa. 340
• 92 A. 341
• 1914 Pa. LEXIS 517

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Street railway companies — Electric wires — Infant trespasser — Proximate cause — Nonsuit.</p> <p>1. While a company employing electricity is bound to the highest degree of care practicable to avoid injury to anyone liable to come, accidently or otherwise, in contact with its charged wires and while it is bound to know that children in their ignorance and playfulness are apt to expose themselves to dangers in connection with electric wires, such as a prudent adult would avoid, and should provide against injury liable to result in consequence of such disposition, it is under no obligation to so safeguard its wires that by no possibility can injury result therefrom.</p> <p>2. Liability to accident suggests probability, in greater or less degree, and it is against such conditions that a party employing electricity must provide, while possibility of accident, including as it does, everything capable of happening or being done, suggests a measure of care utterly impracticable and which the law therefore does not exact.</p> <p>3. In an action to recover damages for personal injuries sustained by an infant plaintiff in consequence of taking hold of a copper wire charged with electricity, a nonsuit is properly entered where it appeared that two boys about nine years of age had found in a public street a spool of copper wire, for the presence of which the defendant was not responsible; that they attached a stone to one end of the wire and threw it over defendant company’s uninsulated feed wire, leaving the other end of the wire dangling in the air about three feet from the ground; and that one of the .boys induced plaintiff to take hold of the wire, whereby the acciwent was caused.</p> <p>Mr. Justice Mestrezat dissents.</p>