Sebring v. Bell Telephone Co.

Citations

• 275 Pa. 131
• 118 A. 729
• 1922 Pa. LEXIS 464

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Telephone companies — Live wires — Wire hanging over road — Evidence—Notice—Constructive notice — Contributory negligence — Infants—Proximate cause.</p> <p>1. Electricity is a dangerous agency and those employing it are required to exercise the highest practical degree of care.</p> <p>2. The duty to inspect electric wires is clear, and failure to perform it negligence.</p> <p>3. Where there is ample proof of constructive notice of a dangerous wire hanging over a street, the question of actual notice, on conflicting testimony, becomes unimportant.</p> <p>4. Suffering a telephone wire long to remain broken and hanging down in a street, where, from natural causes or from the playing of •children, it might be brought in contact with a live trolley wire, is an act of negligence which will render the telephone company liable for an injury caused thereby to a child too young to appreciate the danger.</p> <p>5. Where boys come suddenly upon such a wire in their path at night without previous knowledge of its presence, they are not bound to anticipate the company had left it in a dangerous condition. The question of their contributory negligence is for the jury.</p> <p>6. In such case, Where it appears that the boys either pushed or pulled the hanging wire until it came in contact with a live trolley wire, the question of proximate cause is for the jury.</p> <p>7. The court cannot say as a matter of law whether or not there was such independent intervening agency as necessarily broke the causal connection between defendant’s negligence and the accident.</p> <p>Negligence — Damages—Excessive verdict — Instructions—No request for additional instructions.</p> <p>8. Where the entire subject of damages in a negligence case was submitted by a request of defendant covering in a general way the entire subject of damages, which request was affirmed, and no additional instructions were asked, the defendant cannot, on appeal, complain as to the inadequacy of the charge