Trout v. Philadelphia Electric Co.

Citations

• 236 Pa. 506
• 84 A. 967
• 1912 Pa. LEXIS 788

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Electric light company — Live wire — Proximate cause.</p> <p>1. In an action against an electric light company to recover damages for the death of a boy thirteen years old resulting from his contact with an electric wire where the insulation had worn off, a verdict and judgment for the plaintiff cannot he sustained where the evidence shows that the wire in question was stretched upon poles and swinging at a distance of about four feet six inches from the outside edge of the cornice of a house, that the boy went up to the top of his father’s house through a trap door, and from there over the house tops to another roof some four doors distant, where he lay down on the tin cornice about one foot from the edge; that he threw a corncob tied to the end of a string over the electric wire and pulled it toward him in order to detach his kite which had been caught on the wire; and that when the wire came within reach he touched it with one hand and immediately received the shock which killed him.</p> <p>2. In such a case the proximate cause of the injury was not the failure of the defendant to repair the defective insulation, but it was the boy’s own independent intervening act in voluntarily getting the wire within his reach in a manner and under circumstances which could not reasonably have been foreseen. Mullen v. Wilkes-Barre Gas & Electric Co., 229 Pa. 54, distinguished.</p>