Home Oil & Gas Co. v. Dabney

Citations

• 79 Kan. 820
• 101 P. 488
• 1909 Kan. LEXIS 288

Syllabus

<p>SYLLABUS BY THE COURT.</p> <p>1. Proximate Cause—Question of Law or Fact. Ordinarily the question whether a given act or omission was the proximate cause of an injury is for the jury, but where the facts are undisputed, and the court can see that the resulting injury was not probable but remote, it is the duty of the court to determine the question of proximate cause and not send it to a jury.</p> <p>2.. Damages—Injury by Fire—Proximate Cause—Evidence. In an action to recover damages for the loss of drilling-tools and machinery by fire at a well, resulting from an explosion of flowing oil and gas, where the only negligence charged is that ' the owners of the well caused the same to be shot with nitroglycerin late in the evening instead of waiting until the following day, and failed to take precautions before shooting the well to have the same capped and connected with a tank, and failed to leave a suitable person in charge of the well during the night, and the evidence shows that the explosion occurred about nine o’clock in the night-time, when no one was present, that there was no fire about the premises, and there is no • evidence showing how the escaping oil and gas came in contact with fire, and nothing to show what the immediate or •direct cause of the explosion was, held, that the alleged acts of negligence were the remote and not the proximate cause •of the injury, that the proximate cause was necessarily some independent agency, that the acts of the defendants did nothing more than furnish the condition or give rise to the occasion by which the injury was made possible, and that on the undisputed facts a demurrer to the evidence should have been sustained.</p>