Woodrury v. Tampa Water Works Co.

Citations

• 57 Fla. 243

Syllabus

<p>1. Where a water company undertakes to render the public service of furnishing water for fire protection in a city, an individual may maintain an action against the company to recover damages for a loss proximately resulting to him from the negligent failure of the company to perform its duty to the plaintiff as a part of the public service undertaken, if the loss is such as the company should reasonably have contemplated as the ordinary, natural and probable result of the negligence.</p> <p>2. Negligence is a proximate cause of an injury or loss when in ordinary, natural sequence it causes or contributes to causing the injury or loss, without an intervening independent efficient cause.</p> <p>3. The duty a water company owes by implication of law to an individual property owner by virtue of engaging in the public service of furnishing water for fire protection, is to supply the hydrants near .the property of the 'individual- with water as legally required. The--law imposes no duty to insure property or to extinguish fires.</p> <p>4. Where a, water, company is engaged.in rendering the public service of furnishing water for fire protection in a city, and an action for negligence is brought against the company by an individual, án allegation that the negligence consisted in the failure of the company to supply the hydrants in the immediate section-, where the --fire existed with water for fire purposes, and. by reason thereof the fire was not extinguished and then and there spread to and burned the plaintiff’s property, does not show that the negligence complained of was a proximate cause of the plaintiff’s loss, where it 'appears that the plaintiff’s property was not located where the fire originated and “existed,” and it does not appear that the defendant was responsible for starting the fire or was under a duty to extinguish the fire and failed to do so. The negligence of the defendant in failing to furnish water where the fire originated may not be the proximat