Shaughnessy v. Pittsburg

Citations

• 20 Pa. Super. 609
• 1902 Pa. Super. LEXIS 288

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Extraordinary flood — Waters.</p> <p>Ordinary care does not call upon a person to protect against an extraordinary flood.</p> <p>An extraordinary flood is not simply an unusual flood that does not occur often, but it is a flood which an ordinarily prudent man in the exercise of reasonable judgment would not expect to occur at all.</p> <p>In an action for negligence, where the defendant alleges an extraordinary flood as the cause of the loss, and gives evidence to that effect, and witnesses for the plaintiff testify that many times before the stream had been higher than it was at the time of the accident, the question whether the flood was an extraordinary one or not is for the jury,</p> <p>Negligence — Proximate and remote cause.</p> <p>The test of proximate cause is whether the facts constitute a continuous succession of evenis so linked together that they become a natural whole, or whether the chain of events is so broken that they become independent, and the final result cannot be said to be the natural and probable consequence of the primary cause, the alleged negligent act. The injury must be such a natural and probable consequence of the negligence thatit might and ought to have been foreseen as likely to follow the act.</p> <p>Negligence — Joint tortfeasors — Practice, G. P.</p> <p>When a plaintiff in an action of trespass to recover damages for negligence declares for a joint tort, and the evidence showed no joint action by the defendants, a verdict and judgment against one defendant for a separate tort cannot stand.</p>