Roach v. Kelly

Citations

• 194 Pa. 24
• 44 A. 1090
• 1899 Pa. LEXIS 718

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Proximate and remote came.</p> <p>A man is answerable for the consequences of a fault only so far as the same are natural or proximate, and as may on this account be foreseen by ordinary forecast, and not for those which arise from a conjunction of his fault with other circumstances of an extraordinary nature.</p> <p>Liquor laws — Selling to intoxicated person — Death—Remote and proximate cause — Province of court and jury — Acts of May 8,1854, and May 13, 1887.</p> <p>In an action against a saloon keeper to recover damages for the death of plaintiff’s husband alleged to have been caused by the act of the defendant in furnishing liquor to the deceased while intoxicated, where the evidence shows that the deceased entered the defendant’s saloon and was furnished with liquor while intoxicated; that he quarreled with a man against whom he had a grudge, and then left the saloon, and quarreled with- a second man, then proceeded deliberately through a tunnel to a private lot on the opposite side of a railway, leisurely cast off his clothes, fought with his second opponent, beat him and then engaged with his first opponent, and when the police came fled from them, slipped down a steep bank he was trying to climb, fell into an open sewer hole negligently left unguarded on a private lot, and thus broke his neck, the furnishing of the liquor is so remote from the injury that there can be no recovery, and the defendant is entitled to binding instructions. The act of May 8, 1854, which declares that “ any person furnishing liquor to another in violation of law shall be held civilly responsible for any injury to person or property in consequence of such furnishing,” imposes no higher degree of responsibility on the liquor dealer than the common law imposes on wrongdoers.</p>