Lopes v. Sahuque

Citations

• 114 La. 1004
• 38 So. 810
• 1904 La. LEXIS 523

Syllabus

<p>APPEAL — DISMISSAL — PILING TRANSCRIPT —INJURY TO CHILD — VIOLATION OP ORDINANCE-EVIDENCE.</p> <p>Appellants have three judicial days after the return day within which to file the transcript, whether the court is in session on that day or not.</p> <p>1. It does not necessarily follow, because an act which is charged to have caused damage to another is violative of a city ordinance, that that fact itself enters as a factor in determining whether the party' complaining has a right of action.</p> <p>2. Courts have much less latitude in the “interpreting” statutes of ordinances — that is, in ascertaining the meaning of the language used —than they have in construing or “applying” them; that is; in determining their scope and operation, their object and purpose, and the mischief which they are intended to prevent. The ordinance charged to have been violated in this case did not have as its object the protecting and safeguarding of children from their unauthorized acts in entering and playing in carts left upon the streets by their owners. An injury received under such circumstances would not be the natural result of the violation of the ordinance, but a collateral consequence dependent to creating pecuniary responsibilities upon the special facts of the case. The general public are not put upon guard as to the danger to' be apprehended from the violation of an ordinance further than as to the specific injury or class of injuries which it was its object and purpose to prevent.</p> <p>3. The violation of an ordinance does not necessarily carry with it the abrogation of the application to particular cases of the rules of contributory negligence, or other questions affecting defensively the liability of the defendant for damages.</p> <p>4. Evidence that no accident had followed for a long time after the existence of a certain fact would not be determinative of its not being actually by a concurrence of special facts dangerous, but the existence of the fact without injury