Royal Indemnity Co. v. Midland Counties Public Service Corp.
Royal Indemnity Co. v. Midland Counties Public Service Corp.
Opinion of the Court
This is an appeal from a judgment rendered on a verdict of a jury in favor of the plaintiff in the sum of thirteen thousand dollars. The plaintiff claims to be subrogated to the rights of one A. J. Bellah to recover for personal injuries alleged to have been received by him by 'reason of the negligence of the defendant. The injured man was a farm-hand and was in the employ of one Max Flentge at the time of the accident. It is claimed by the plaintiff that the employer and employee were within the provisions of the Workmen’s Compensation Act and that the plaintiff was the insurance carrier of the employer and paid the ¿I aim of the employee and in consequence succeeded to his rights against the defendant.
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The facts of the case, in so far as they involve the merits, are as follows: The defendant was a public service corporation engaged in the business of generating and transmitting electricity in the county of Fresno and elsewhere. It had a line of poles running along the county highway into the town of Coalinga, on which poles ran the high-power lines of the company. The pole involved here was situated on the land leased and cultivated by the employer and along the line of the county road about eight or ten feet inside the line. It was guyed by wires running from a point near the top of the pole to the ground on either side. Some of the wires on this pole were dead, but the lower wires, with which we are concerned here, were carrying a load of ten thousand volts of electricity. The guy wires were insulated at a point where, had they broken near the ground and fallen in a perpendicular line from the top of the pole, the insulation would have been below the lowest live wire and the electricity could not have traveled down their length to the injury of anyone upon the ground. On the day of the accident A. H. Bellah, the injured man, was working in company with another man, Wagner, in mowing around the edge of a field of barley. He had a team of horses, as also had his companion. Desiring to eat their luncheon at the place where they found themselves at the noon hour, they unhitched their horses and allowed them to graze, and retired themselves to the shade of the wagon to rest. One of Bellah’s horses was a “snorting” colt, and he hitched it to an older horse. The older horse in some way got astraddle of the guy wire of the defendant. Bellah attempted to back it off of the wire. There is conflicting testimony regarding the amount of strain put upon the wire by the horse during Bellah’s attempt to release it. One witness testified that the horse was plunging and kicking, but Bellah testified that he was not plunging. But, at any rate, while Bellah was attempting to push and hack the horse off of the wire, and had placed the bit in its mouth and was holding on to the ring thereof, several of the strands of the guy wire became detached from the top of the pole, causing the guy wire to sag and come in contact with a live wire at a point below the insulation; the electricity was conveyed down the guy wire into the body of the horse, which was killed by the shock, and Bellah, who was holding on to the bit, received a severe shock, which
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threw him violently to the ground, and as a result he has sustained very serious and permanent injuries. It appears that when the strands in the guy wires became loosened and it sagged against the live wire, said gmy wire remained at approximately the same angle from the pole as it had been originally placed, and the insulation was not, while it was held at such an angle, below the lowest live wire. The plaintiff insists that a breakage or pulling loose of the strands of the guy wire where it was attached to the pole should have been anticipated by the defendant, and that it was its duty to have so insulated the guy wire that under any conditions which would cause a sagging of the wire, the insulation would nevertheless be at a point below a place of possible contact with the live wires. Appellant argues that there is no absolute duty upon defendant to insulate its guy wires in any particular manner, but that it is possible for the guy wires to be made so strong and to be placed so firmly in their position at a safe distance from the live wires that insulation would be unnecessary; in other words, that the relative positions of the wires themselves may furnish insulation by means of the intervening air. This is tacitly admitted by the respondent, who contends, however, that whether in the particular case the porcelain insulation was necessary and its absence negligence was a question of fact which Avas submitted to the jury under proper instructions, and that the jury has found by its verdict that the defendant was guilty of negligence in not insulating the guy wires at a point below the live wires in the same manner in which said guy wire was insulated at a point above the lowest live wire. Our conclusion is in agreement with this contention of the appellant.
Counsel for appellant very ably argues that even though the negligence of the defendant in not insulating its guy wires be admitted, yet such negligence was not the proximate cause of the injury to Bellah, and that such negligence would not have caused any injury to Bellah except for an independent intervening cause over which the defendant had no control, which was the struggles of the horse during Bellah’s attempt to back him off of the wire, causing a breakage or detachment of the strands of the guy wire. We shall consider some of the authorities relied upon by appellant. In the case of
Polloni
v.
Ryland,
28 Cal. App. 51, [151 Pac. 296], the court said, quoting from a federal ease: “An injury that is not the natural consequence of negligence, and which could not have resulted from it but for the interposition of some new, independent cause
that could not have been anticipated,
is not actionable. ’ ’ It is. said in the case of
Bank of Savings
v.
Murfey,
68 Cal., at p. 463, [9 Pac. 847], quoting from Beach on Contributory Negligence: “An act is the proximate cause of an event, when,
in the natural order of things and under the circumstances,
.it would necessarily produce that event, when it is the first and directed
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power producing the result, the
causa causans
of the school-men.” Also, quoting from Cooley on Torts: “If the wrong and resulting damages are not known
by common experience
to be usually and naturally in sequence, and the damage does not,
according to the ordinary course of
events, follow from the wrong, then the wrong and the damage are not sufficiently conjoined or concatenated as cause and effect, to support the action.” Was the entanglement of the horse in the wire an “independent cause that could not have been anticipated,” as said in the federal case; or was it “in the natural order of things under the circumstances,” or would the damage “in the ordinary course of events follow from the wrong,” as said by our own supreme court? Appellant argues that it had no reason to anticipate such a happening.
The other objections of the appellant we consider to be without merit and to require no discussion here. Counsel for appellant conceded upon the oral argument that if defendant was liable under the law, the judgment was not excessive. It, therefore, appears that substantial justice has been done between the parties.
The judgment is affirmed.
Brittain, J., and Haven, J., concurred.
A petition to have the cause heard in the supreme court, after judgment in the district court of appeal, was denied by the supreme court on October 9, 1919.
All the Justices concurred, except Olney, J., who was absent.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- ROYAL INDEMNITY COMPANY (A Corporation), Respondent, v. MIDLAND COUNTIES PUBLIC SERVICE CORPORATION (A Corporation), Appellant
- Cited By
- 16 cases
- Status
- Published