Hedricks v. Schuylkill Township
Hedricks v. Schuylkill Township
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
To justify the court in giving binding instructions to find for the defendant' two conditions must concur: (1) the controlling facts must be established beyond doubt; (2) their effect, in the conclusions to which they lead, must be so clear and unquestionable that it may be judicially declared: Menner v. Del. & Hudson Canal Co., 7 Pa. Superior Ct. 135; Eardley v. Keeling & Ridge, 10 Pa. Superior Ct. 339. A careful examination of the evidence convinces us that such instruction should not have been given in this case. It may be, and doubtless was, a fact that the heavy dovuifall of rain was an important cause in producing the condition of the road of which the plaintiff complains. Although the supervisors were in no way responsible for such a cause, the testimony clearly shows that they directed and controlled the placing of the earth and stones on the roadbed and must have known that an ordinary rainfall would produce a condition similar to that which the jury has said caused this accident. Whether the deposit on the roadway was six or thirty inches in depth, as testified to by several witnesses, was a fact for the jury alone. The work was not done in grading or repairing the public road as such; and whether the water company was negligent in depositing this amount of earth and stone over the whole surface of the roadbed, under the supervision of the township authorities, without preserving a part of the roadway for use by the public and without requiring the maintenance of drains to carry off the normal rainfall and prevent the superimposed materials from making the road unsafe
The judgment is affirmed.
Rice, P. J., and W. D. Porter, J., dissent.
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- Negligence — Province of court and jury — Binding instructions for defendant. To justify the court in giving binding instructions to find for the defendant, two conditions must concur: (1) the controlling facts must be established beyond doubt; (2) their effect, in the conclusions to which they lead, must be so clear and unquestionable that it may be judicially declared.- Negligence — Townships—Deposit of material on public road — Province of court and jury. In an action against a township to recover damages for injuries to a horse, the case is for the jury, and a verdict and judgment for plaintiff will be sustained where the evidence tends to show that a water company had excavated a trench along the highway at the point where the accident occurred, and had deposited earth and stones on the roadbed; that this work had been done under the control and general direction of one of the supervisors; that the earth and stones had been thrown over the whole highway; that shortly before the accident occurred there was a heavy rain fall; that the plaintiff at the time of the accident was driving over the road with a hay press weighing about 4,000 pounds, drawn by three horses, and that owing to the soft condition of the surface of the road, the wheels of the hay press sank into the mud, and that one of the horses was permanently injured in the struggle to extricate the hay press.