Hebert v. Lake Charles Ice, Light & Waterworks Co.

Citations

• 111 La. 522
• 35 So. 731
• 64 L.R.A. 101
• 1903 La. LEXIS 554

Syllabus

<p>ELECTRIC LIGHT COMPANY—NEGLIGENCE-FALLING WIRE.</p> <p>1. A wire of an electrical company, detached from the poles and lying in the streets of a town, is, of course, out of place, and those having control of it and charged with the legal duty of taking due care of it have the burden of accounting for its being found in that condition and situation (Maus v. Broderick, 25 South. 977, 51 La. Ann. 1153), and to show that it was not due to its negligence.</p> <p>2. It is the absolute duty of an electric light company conveying electricity by overhead wires strung through the streets of a city to keep its wires constantly insulated so as to be prepared to guard against the effect of objects coming in contact with them regardless of the facts and causes which may bring about the contact.</p> <p>3. The facts that a telephone company may have strung its wires above those of the electric light company already in position, and should have_ taken no steps to guard against the coming in contact of the wires of the two companies at the_ crossing points, and that in stringing its wires it did so so negligently and loosely that one of its wires fell, in a storm, upon an uninsulated wire below, causing it to burn and fall on the street, is no excuse to the electric company in not having performed its own duty of additional and special precautions in the premises. A fault on the part of the telephone company did not relieve it from the consequence of its own fault. The falling of the telephone wire on the wire below would have been attended with no disaster but for the uninsulated condition of the latter, and that condition is to be attributed as the proximate cause of the death of the husband and father of the plaintiffs.</p> <p>(Syllabus by the Court.)</p>