Scott v. Allegheny Valley Railway Co.

Citations

• 172 Pa. 646
• 37 W.N.C. 548
• 33 A. 712
• 1896 Pa. LEXIS 832

Syllabus

<p>Common carriers — Negligence—Fire—Remote and proximate cause.</p> <p>Common carriers are answerable for the ordinary and proximate consequence of their negligence, and not for those that are remote and extraordinary; and this liability includes all those consequences which may have arisen from the neglect to make provision for those damages which ordinary skill and foresight is bound to anticipate.</p> <p>In determining what is proximate, the true rule is that the injury must be the natural and probable consequence of the negligence; such a consequence as, under the surrounding circumstances of the case, might and ought to have been foreseen by the wrongdoer as likely to flow from his act.</p> <p>A freight car loaded with twine, which arrived in the evening, was run by the defendant railroad company on a track in the company’s yard to a point three feet from an alley, to be ready for unloading in the morning. During the night a fire broke out in a building across the alley. The building did not belong to the defendant, and it had no control over the cause of the fire. The car caught fire and the contents of the car and the car itself were partially destroyed. The whole would have been burned if the company’s employee had not immediately after the five broke out run the car out of reach of the flames, and put out the fire. The evidence showed that the car door was open for a space of about ten inches at the time the fire broke out, and probably through this opening sparks from the burning building set fire to the twine. The bill of lading provided that the carrier should not be liable for loss by fire. Held, that under the undisputed evidence it was for the court to say as a matter of law that the defendant company was not guilty of any negligence which was the proximate cause of the loss.</p>