Part 1 — CHAPTER II NEGLIGENT INTERFERENCE (continued 2)

65R. V. Richards, in support of the rule.

First, there was no duty imposed on the defendant, as there is on carriers or other bailees, under an implied contract, to be responsible for the exercise of any given degree of prudence: the defendant had a right to place his stack as near to the extremity of his own land as he pleased, Wyatt v. Harrison, 3 B. & Adol. 871: under that right, and subject to no contract, he can only be called on to act bona fide to the best of his judgment; if he has done that, it is a contradiction in terms, to inquire whether or not he has been guilty of gross negligence. At all events what would have been gross negligence ought to be estimated by the faculties of the individual, and not by those of other men. The measure of prudence varies so with the varying faculties of men, that it is impossible to say what is gross negligence with reference to the standard of what is called ordinary prudence. In Crook v. Jadis, 5 B. & Adol. 910, Patteson, J., says, “I never could understand what is meant by parties taking a bill under circumstances which ought to have excited the suspicion of a prudent man;” and Taunton, J., “I cannot estimate the degree of care which a prudent man should take.”...

Tindal, C. J. I agree that this is a case primæ impressionis; but I feel no difficulty in applying to it the principles of law as laid down in other cases of a similar kind. Undoubtedly this is not a case of contract, such as a bailment or the like, where the bailee is responsible in consequence of the remuneration he is to receive: but there is a rule of law which says you must so enjoy your own property as not to injure that of another; and according to that rule the defendant is liable for the consequence of his own neglect: and though the defendant did not himself light the fire, yet mediately he is as much the cause of it as if he had himself put a candle to the rick; for it is well known that hay will ferment and take fire if it be not carefully stacked. It has been decided that if an occupier burns weeds so near the boundary of his own land that damage ensues to the property of his neighbor, he is liable to an action for the amount of injury done, unless the accident were occasioned by a sudden blast which he could not foresee. Turberville v. Stamp, 1 Salk. 13. But put the case of a chemist making experiments with ingredients, singly innocent, but when combined liable to ignite; if he leaves them together, and injury is thereby occasioned to the property of his neighbor, can any one doubt that an action on the case would lie?

It is contended, however, that the learned judge was wrong in leaving this to the jury as a case of gross negligence, and that the question of negligence was so mixed up with reference to what would be the conduct of a man of ordinary prudence that the jury might have thought the latter the rule by which they were to decide; that such a rule would be too uncertain to act upon; and that the question ought to have been whether the defendant had acted honestly and bona fide 66to the best of his own judgment. That, however, would leave so vague a line as to afford no rule at all, the degree of judgment belonging to each individual being infinitely various: and though it has been urged that the care which a prudent man would take, is not an intelligible proposition as a rule of law, yet such has always been the rule adopted in cases of bailment, as laid down in Coggs v. Bernard, 2 Ld. Raym. 909. Though in some cases a greater degree of care is exacted than in others, yet in “the second sort of bailment, viz., commodatum or lending gratis, the borrower is bound to the strictest care and diligence to keep the goods so as to restore them back again to the lender; because the bailee has a benefit by the use of them, so as if the bailee be guilty of the least neglect he will be answerable; as if a man should lend another a horse to go westward, or for a month; if the bailee put this horse in his stable, and he were stolen from thence, the bailee shall not be answerable for him; but if he or his servant leave the house or stable doors open, and the thieves take the opportunity of that, and steal the horse, he will be chargeable, because the neglect gave the thieves the occasion to steal the horse.” The care taken by a prudent man has always been the rule laid down; and as to the supposed difficulty of applying it, a jury has always been able to say, whether, taking that rule as their guide, there has been negligence on the occasion in question.

Instead, therefore, of saying that the liability for negligence should be co-extensive with the judgment of each individual, which would be as variable as the length of the foot of each individual, we ought rather to adhere to the rule, which requires in all cases a regard to caution such as a man of ordinary prudence would observe.^[58] That was in substance the criterion presented to the jury in this case, and therefore the present rule must be discharged.

[Concurring opinions were delivered by Park, and Vaughan, JJ. Gaselee, J. concurred in the result.]

Rule discharged.

67 BLYTH v. BIRMINGHAM WATERWORKS CO. In the Exchequer, February 6, 1856. Reported in 11 Exchequer, 781.

This was an appeal by the defendants against the decision of the judge of the County Court of Birmingham. The case was tried before a jury, and a verdict found for the plaintiff for the amount claimed by the particulars. The particulars of the claim alleged, that the plaintiff sought to recover for damage sustained by the plaintiff by reason of the negligence of the defendants in not keeping their water-pipes and the apparatus connected therewith in proper order.

The case stated that the defendants were incorporated by stat. 7 Geo. IV., c. cix., for the purpose of supplying Birmingham with water.

By the 84th section of their Act it was enacted, that the company should, upon the laying down of any main-pipe or other pipe in any street, fix, at the time of laying down such pipe, a proper and sufficient fire-plug in each such street, and should deliver the key or keys of such fire-plug to the persons having the care of the engine-house in or near to the said street, and cause another key to be hung up in the watch-house in or near to the said street. By sec. 87, pipes were to be eighteen inches beneath the surface of the soil. By the 89th section, the mains were at all times to be kept charged with water. The defendants derived no profit from the maintenance of the plugs distinct from the general profits of the whole business, but such maintenance was one of the conditions under which they were permitted to exercise the privileges given by the Act. The main-pipe opposite the house of the plaintiff was more than eighteen inches below the surface. The fire-plug was constructed according to the best known system, and the materials of it were at the time of the accident sound and in good order. The apparatus connected with the fire-plug was as follows:—

The lower part of a wooden plug was inserted in a neck, which projected above and formed part of the main. About the neck there was a bed of brickwork puddled in with clay. The plug was also enclosed in a cast iron tube, which was placed upon and fixed to the brickwork. The tube was closed at the top by a movable iron stopper having a hole in it for the insertion of the key, by which the plug was loosened when occasion required it.

The plug did not fit tight to the tube, but room was left for it to move freely. This space was necessarily left for the purpose of easily and quickly removing the wooden plug to allow the water to flow. On the removal of the wooden plug the pressure upon the main forced the water up through the neck and cap to the surface of the street.

68On the 24th of February, a large quantity of water, escaping from the neck of the main, forced its way through the ground into the plaintiff’s house. The apparatus had been laid down twenty-five years, and had worked well during that time. The defendants’ engineer stated, that the water might have forced its way through the brickwork round the neck of the main, and that the accident might have been caused by the frost, inasmuch as the expansion of the water would force up the plug out of the neck, and the stopper being incrusted with ice would not suffer the plug to ascend. One of the severest frosts on record set in on the 15th of January, 1855, and continued until after the accident in question. An incrustation of ice and snow had gathered about the stopper, and in the street all round, and also for some inches between the stopper and the plug. The ice had been observed on the surface of the ground for a considerable time before the accident. A short time after the accident, the company’s turncock removed the ice from the stopper, took out the plug, and replaced it.

The judge left it to the jury to consider whether the company had used proper care to prevent the accident. He thought, that, if the defendants had taken out the ice adhering to the plug, the accident would not have happened, and left it to the jury to say whether they ought to have removed the ice. The jury found a verdict for the plaintiff for the sum claimed.

Field, for the appellant. There was no negligence on the part of the defendants. The plug was pushed out by the frost, which was one of the severest ever known.

The Court then called on

Kennedy, for the respondent. The company omitted to take sufficient precautions. The fire-plug is placed in the neck of the main. In ordinary cases the plug rises and lets the water out; but here there was an incrustation round the stopper, which prevented the escape of the water. This might have been easily removed. It will be found, from the result of the cases, that the company were bound to take every possible precaution. The fact of premises being fired by sparks from an engine on a railway is evidence of negligence: Piggott v. Eastern Counties Railway Company, 3 C. B. 229 (E. C. L. R. vol. 54); Aldridge v. Great Western Railway Company, 3 M. & Gr. 515 (Id. 42), 4 Scott, N. R. 156, 1 Dowl. N. S. 247, S. C. [Martin, B. I held, in a case tried at Liverpool, in 1853, that, if locomotives are sent through the country emitting sparks, the persons doing so incur all the responsibilities of insurers; that they were liable for all the consequences.^[59] I invited counsel to tender a bill of exceptions to that ruling. Water is a different matter.] It is the defendants’ water, therefore they are bound to see that no injury is done to any one by 69it. An action has been held to lie for so negligently constructing a hayrick at the extremity of the owner’s land, that, by reason of its spontaneous ignition, his neighbor’s house was burnt down: Vaughan v. Menlove, 3 Bing. N. C. 468 (E. C. L. R. vol. 32). [Bramwell, B. In that case discussions had arisen as to the probability of fire, and the defendant was repeatedly warned of the danger, and said he would chance it.] He referred to Wells v. Ody, 1 M. & W. 452. [Alderson, B. Is it an accident which any man could have foreseen?] A scientific man could have foreseen it. If no eye could have seen what was going on, the case might have been different; but the company’s servants could have seen, and actually did see, the ice which had collected about the plug. It is of the last importance, that these plugs, which are fire-plugs, should be kept by the company in working order. The accident cannot be considered as having been caused by the act of God: Siordet v. Hall, 4 Bing. 607 (Id. 13).

Alderson, B. I am of opinion that there was no evidence to be left to the jury. The case turns upon the question, whether the facts proved show that the defendants were guilty of negligence. Negligence is the omission to do something which a reasonable man, guided upon those considerations which ordinarily regulate the conduct of human affairs, would do, or doing something which a prudent and reasonable man would not do.^[60] The defendants might have been liable for negligence, if, unintentionally, they omitted to do that which a reasonable person would have done, or did that which a person taking reasonable precautions would not have done. A reasonable man would act with reference to the average circumstances of the temperature in ordinary years. The defendants had provided against such frosts as experience would have led men, acting prudently, to provide against; and they are not guilty of negligence, because their precautions proved insufficient against the effects of the extreme severity of the frost of 1855, which penetrated to a greater depth than any which ordinarily occurs south of the polar regions. Such a state of circumstances constitutes a contingency against which no reasonable man can provide. The result was an accident for which the defendants cannot be held liable.

Martin, B. I think that the direction was not correct, and that there was no evidence for the jury. The defendants are not responsible, unless there was negligence on their part. To hold otherwise would be to make the company responsible as insurers.

70Bramwell, B. The Act of Parliament directed the defendants to lay down pipes, with plugs in them, as safety-valves, to prevent the bursting of the pipes. The plugs were properly made, and of proper material; but there was an accumulation of ice about this plug, which prevented it from acting properly. The defendants were not bound to keep the plugs clear. It appears to me that the plaintiff was under quite as much obligation to remove the ice and snow which had accumulated, as the defendants. However that may be, it appears to me that it would be monstrous to hold the defendants responsible because they did not foresee and prevent an accident, the cause of which was so obscure, that it was not discovered until many months after the accident had happened.

Verdict to be entered for the defendants.^[61]

YERKES v. NORTHERN PACIFIC R. CO. Supreme Court, Wisconsin, November 29, 1901. Reported in 112 Wisconsin Reports, 184.

Dodge, J.... Plaintiff assigns as error the definition of the due care which plaintiff was bound to exercise to avert the charge of contributory negligence, viz.:—

“The plaintiff cannot recover in this case unless you find that he was in no manner guilty of any want of ordinary care, or such care as persons of ordinary care ordinarily use, which contributed to his said injuries.”^[62]

That this was an incorrect and misleading definition of “ordinary care” has been declared so often by this court as to make further discussion unnecessary. The rule has been repeatedly laid down that due care is to be tested by the surrounding circumstances, and that no definition is complete or correct which does not embody that element.^[63] Ordinary care is the care ordinarily exercised by the great 71mass of mankind, or its type, the ordinarily prudent person, under the same or similar circumstances, and the omission of the last qualification, “under the same or similar circumstances,” or “under like circumstances,” is error. Boelter v. Ross L. Co., 103 Wis. 324, 330; Dehsoy v. Milwaukee E. R. & L. Co., 110 Wis. 412; Warden v. Miller, ante, p. 67. The necessity of the omitted qualification to a correct definition of due care is especially obvious under the circumstances of this case. What would be the care of an ordinarily prudent person, standing in safety upon a stationary platform, or even standing upon the perfect and level footboard of a moving switch engine, would not be the care to be expected of one attempting to perform the services of a yard man upon a bent, declining, and defective footboard such as here presented. The attention of the jury was not called by this instruction to a very important element which they must consider in order to decide whether the plaintiff was or was not guilty of contributory negligence, and the instruction to them on the subject was therefore misleading and erroneous.

HILL v. GLENWOOD Supreme Court, Iowa, July 13, 1904. Reported in 124 Iowa Reports, 479.

Weaver, J.^[64] The plaintiff claims to have been injured upon one of the public walks in the city of Glenwood, and that such injury was occasioned by reason of the negligence of the city in the maintenance of the walk at the place of the accident, and without fault on his own part contributing thereto. From verdict and judgment in his favor for $665, the city appeals. In this court the appellant makes no claim that the city was not negligent, but a reversal is sought on other grounds.

It was shown without dispute that plaintiff had been blind for many years, and this fact is the basis of the criticism upon the charge given to the jury. In the third paragraph of the charge, the court, defining negligence, said: “(3) Negligence is defined to be the want of ordinary care; that is, such care as an ordinary prudent person would exercise under like circumstances. There is no precise definition of 72ordinary care, but it may be said that it is such care as an ordinarily prudent person would exercise under like circumstances, and should be proportioned to the danger and peril reasonably to be apprehended from a lack of proper prudence. This rule applies alike to both parties to this action, and may be used in determining whether either was negligent.” In the eighth paragraph, referring to the plaintiff’s duty to exercise care for his own safety, the following language is used: “(8) It must also appear from the evidence that the plaintiff did not in any way contribute to the happening of the accident in question by any negligence on his part; that is, by his own want of ordinary care. The plaintiff, on his part, was under obligation to use ordinary care to prevent injury when passing over any sidewalk; and if he failed so to do, and his failure in any way contributed to the happening of the accident in question, then he cannot recover herein. The evidence shows without dispute that he was blind, and this fact should be considered by you in determining what ordinary care on his part would require when he was attempting to pass over one of the sidewalks of this city.” Counsel for appellant do not deny that the rules here laid down would be a correct statement of the law of negligence and contributory negligence as applied to the ordinary case of sidewalk accident, but it is urged that the conceded fact of plaintiff’s blindness made it the duty of the court to say to the jury that a blind person who attempts to use the public street “must exercise a higher degree of care and caution than a person ordinarily would be expected or required to use had he full possession of his sense of sight.” We cannot give this proposition our assent. It is too well established to require argument or citation of authority that the care which the city is bound to exercise in the maintenance of its streets is ordinary and reasonable care, the care which ordinarily marks the conduct of a person of average prudence and foresight. So, too, it is equally well settled that the care which a person using the street is bound to exercise on his own part to discover danger and avoid accident and injury is of precisely the same character, the ordinary and reasonable care of a person of average prudence and foresight. The streets are for the use of the general public without discrimination; for the weak, the lame, the halt and the blind, as well as for those possessing perfect health, strength, and vision. The law casts upon one no greater burden of care than upon the other. It is true, however, that in determining what is reasonable or ordinary care we must look to the circumstances and surroundings of each particular case. As said by us in Graham v. Oxford, 105 Iowa, 708: “There is no fixed rule for determining what is ordinary care applicable to all cases, but each case must be determined according to its own facts.” In the case before us the plaintiff’s blindness is simply one of the facts which the jury must give consideration, in finding whether he did or did not act with the care which a reasonably prudent man would ordinarily exercise, 73when burdened by such infirmity. In other words, the measures which a traveler upon the street must employ for his own protection depend upon the nature and extent of the peril to which he knows, or in the exercise of reasonable prudence ought to know, he is exposed. The greater and more imminent the risk, the more he is required to look out for and guard against injury to himself; but the care thus exercised is neither more nor less than ordinary care—the care which men of ordinary prudence and experience may reasonably be expected to exercise under like circumstances. See cases cited in 21 Am. & Eng. Enc. Law, (2d ed.) 465, note 1. In the case at bar the plaintiff was rightfully upon the street, and if he was injured by reason of the negligence of the city, and without contributory negligence on his part, he was entitled to a verdict. In determining whether he did exercise due care it was proper for the jury, as we have already indicated, to consider his blindness, and in view of that condition, and all the surrounding facts and circumstances, find whether he exercised ordinary care and prudence. If he did, he was not guilty of contributory negligence.

This view of the law seems to be fairly embodied in the instructions to which exception is taken. If the appellant believed, as it now argues, that the charge should have been more specific, and dwelt with greater emphasis upon the fact of plaintiff’s blindness as an element for the consideration of the jury in finding whether he exercised reasonable care, it had the right to ask an instruction framed to meet its views in that respect. No such request was made, and the omission of the court to so amplify the charge on its own motion was not error.^[65]

KEITH v. WORCESTER STREET R. Co. Supreme Judicial Court, Massachusetts, November 26, 1907. Reported in 196 Massachusetts Reports, 478.

Two Actions of Tort for personal injuries received by the plaintiff’s intestate caused by her falling when stepping across street railway rails which were piled by the defendant street railway company on the highway next to the curbing, and were allowed by the street railway company and the defendant town to remain there, and which, it was alleged, constituted an obstruction of the highway.^[66]

The accident happened in the daytime. The plaintiff’s intestate was near-sighted, and could not recognize a friend at a distance of more than ten or twelve feet.

74At the trial in the Superior Court, defendants requested the following instruction:—

“If the plaintiff’s intestate had defective eyesight, she should take greater care in walking the street than one of good eyesight; and if she failed to use this greater degree of care, the verdict must be for the defendant.”

This request was refused, subject to exception.

In the charge to the jury, the presiding judge stated: “The plaintiff contends and has got to show by a fair preponderance of the evidence that Mrs. Keith was injured, and that she was injured while she was using ... a degree of care that a reasonably prudent and careful person, acting prudently and carefully at the time, would have exercised and should have exercised in your judgment under all the circumstances then surrounding Mrs. Keith. That means not only external circumstances, that means not only the way in which the rails were placed, the location of the car, the necessity of action on her part, but it means also with reference to her personal peculiarities as they were shown to exist upon the stand. For instance, the conduct of a perfectly sound and healthy person may be properly regarded as one thing, when the same conduct on the part of a diseased or infirm person might be regarded as something very different.

“What might be in your judgment perfectly reasonable and proper and careful on the part of a sound person might be regarded fairly by you as improper and careless on the part of an infirm person.

“So, in this case, while I cannot instruct you as a matter of law that Mrs. Keith, if you find her to be near-sighted, was bound to use a higher degree of care than a person not near-sighted, I have got to leave it to you as a matter of fact whether a near-sighted person would not, in order to be careful, have to exercise a higher degree of care than a person not near-sighted. In other words, I have got to leave it to you to determine whether or not a near-sighted person is using due care if he or she under the particular circumstances acts exactly as a person who was not near-sighted would have done. In other words, it is a matter of fact for you to determine whether Mrs. Keith was called on to do differently from a person in full possession of eyesight rather than as a matter of law for me to direct you in regard to it.”

The jury found for the plaintiff in both cases.

Rugg, J.... The defendant asked the court to rule that if the person injured “had defective eyesight, she should take greater care in walking the street than one of good sight, and if she failed to use this greater degree of care the verdict must be for the defendant.” This request properly was refused, for the reason that it directed a verdict upon a single phase of the testimony, which was not necessarily decisive. In this respect the prayer differs vitally from the one which in Winn v. Lowell, 1 Allen, 177, this court held should have been 75given.^[67] We see no reason for modifying the decision in Winn v. Lowell, nor is it inconsistent with subsequent cases. The standard of care established by the law is what the ordinarily prudent and cautious person would do to protect himself under given conditions. There is no higher or different standard for one who is aged, feeble, blind, halt, deaf or otherwise impaired in capacity, than for one in perfect physical condition. It has frequently, in recent as well as earlier cases, been said, in referring to one under some impediment, that greater caution or increased circumspection may be required in view of these adverse conditions. See, for example, Winn v. Lowell, 1 Allen, 177; Hall v. West End Street Railway, 168 Mass. 461; Hilborn v. Boston & Northern Street Railway, 191 Mass. 14; Vecchioni v. New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, 191 Mass. 9; Hawes v. Boston Elevated Railway, 192 Mass. 324; Hamilton v. Boston & Northern Street Railway, 193 Mass. 324. These expressions mean nothing more than that a person so afflicted must put forth a greater degree of effort than one not acting under any disabilities, in order to attain that standard of care which the law has established for everybody. When looked at from one standpoint, it is incorrect to say that a blind person must exercise a higher degree of care than one whose sight is perfect, but in another aspect, a blind person may be obliged to take precautions, practice vigilance and sharpen other senses, unnecessary for one of clear vision, in order to attain that degree of care which the law requires. It may depend in some slight degree upon how the description of duty begins, where the emphasis may fall at a given moment, but when the whole proposition is stated, the rights of the parties are as fully protected in the one way as in the other. It is perhaps more logical to say that the plaintiff is bound to use ordinary care, and that in passing upon what ordinary care demands, due consideration should be given to blindness or other infirmities. This was the course pursued by the Superior Court. Neff v. Wellesley, 148 Mass. 487. Smith v. Wildes, 143 Mass. 556. But it is also correct to say that in the exercise of common prudence one of defective eyesight must usually as matter of general knowledge take more care and employ keener watchfulness in walking upon the streets and avoiding obstructions than the same person with good eyesight, in order to reach the standard established by the law for all persons alike, whether they be weak or strong, sound or deficient.

Exceptions overruled.^[68]

76 MEREDITH v. REED Supreme Court, Indiana, May Term, 1866. Reported in 26 Indiana Reports, 334.

Gregory, C. J. Meredith sued Reed before a justice for an injury done by a stallion of the latter to the mare of the former, resulting in the death of the mare. Jury trial, verdict for the defendant; motion for a new trial overruled and judgment. The evidence is in the record. The facts are substantially as follows: In May, 1865, the defendant owned a stallion, which had previously been let to mares, but owing to the sickness of the owner, was not so let during the spring of 1865. He was a gentle stallion, and had never been known by the owner to be guilty of any vicious acts. Not being in use, he had been kept up in a stable for four or five months. He was secured in the stable by a strong halter and chain fastened through an iron ring in the manger. The stable door was securely fastened on the inside by a strong iron hasp, passed over a staple, and a piece of chain passed two or three times through the staple over the hasp, and the ends firmly tied together with a strong cord. It was also fastened on the outside by a piece of timber, one end of which was planted in the ground, while the other rested against the door. The horse was thus secured on the day and night the injury occurred. The gate of the enclosure surrounding the stable was shut and fastened as usual. About 11 o’clock that night the horse was found loose on the highway, and did the injury complained of. Early the following morning the outside gate was found open; the stable door was found open, with the log prop lying some distance to one side, and the chain which had been passed through the staple was gone, and the cord with which it had been tied was found cut and the pieces lying on the floor.

There are forty-two alleged errors assigned, but many of them are not, in our opinion, so presented as to entitle them to consideration in this Court. So far as the substantial rights of the appellant are involved, all the questions properly presented resolve themselves into the inquiry as to the nature and extent of the liability of the owner of a domestic animal for injuries done by it to the personal property of another, disconnected from any trespass to real estate.

It is contended, on the one hand, that ordinary care was all the law required of the defendant in this case. On the other it is claimed that the utmost care was necessary to free him from liability. Ordinary care is all that the law required in the case in judgment. What is ordinary care in some cases would be carelessness in others. The law regards the circumstances surrounding each case, and the nature of the animal or machinery under control. Greater care is required to be taken of a stallion than of a mare; so in the management of a steam-engine, greater care is necessary than in the use of a plow. Yet it is 77all ordinary care; such care as a prudent, careful man would take under like circumstances. The degree of care is always in proportion to the danger to be apprehended. The case at bar was properly sent to the jury, and the verdict is fully sustained by the evidence.

The judgment is affirmed, with costs.

DENVER ELECTRIC COMPANY v. SIMPSON Supreme Court, Colorado, April Term, 1895. Reported in 21 Colorado Reports, 371.

Action for damage caused to plaintiff, while passing along a public alley, by his coming in contact with one of defendants’ wires heavily charged with electricity, which had become detached from its overhead fastening, and was hanging down to within about two feet of the ground. At the trial there was some evidence tending to show that the position of the wire was due to the negligence of the defendants. Verdict for plaintiff, and judgment thereon. Defendant appealed; alleging as one ground the giving of certain instructions as to the care required by defendant. Those instructions are stated in the opinion.^[69]

Campbell, J.... This court does not recognize any degrees of negligence, such as slight or gross, and logically it ought not to recognize any degrees in its antithesis, care.^[70] The court instructed the jury in this case that the defendant was not an insurer of the safety of plaintiff, but that in constructing its line and maintaining the same in repair, it was held to the utmost degree of care and diligence; that in this respect it is bound to the highest degree of care, skill, and diligence in the construction and maintenance of its lines of wire and other appurtenances, and in carrying on its business, so as to make the same safe against accidents so far as such safety can, by the use of such care and diligence, be secured. If it observed such degree of care, it was not liable; if it failed therein, it was liable for injuries caused thereby.

We think the court was unfortunate in attempting to draw any distinctions in the degrees of care or negligence. It would have been safer and the better practice to instruct the jury,—which ought hereafter 78to be observed,—even in cases like the one before us, that the defendant was bound to exercise that reasonable care and caution which would be exercised by a reasonably prudent and cautious person under the same or similar circumstances. In addition to this, the jury should have been instructed that the care increases as the danger does, and that where the business in question is attended with great peril to the public, the care to be exercised by the person conducting the business is commensurate with the increased danger. But, in effect, this is what the court did. Under the facts of the case, the law required of the defendant conducting, as it did, a business so dangerous to the public, the highest degree of care which skill and foresight can attain consistent with the practical conduct of its business under the known methods and the present state of the particular art. This is the measure of the duty owed by a common carrier to a passenger for hire. Thompson’s Carriers of Passengers, p. 208, and cases cited. Not for the same reason, or because the doctrine rests upon the same principle, but with even greater force should this rule apply to a person or corporation engaged in the equally, if not more, dangerous business of distributing electricity throughout a city by means of wires strung over the public alleys and streets, in so far as concerned its duty to the travelling public.

In those courts where degrees of negligence are not countenanced, nevertheless, in cases where the duty of a common carrier of passengers is laid down, the jury are told that carriers are bound to the utmost degree of care which human foresight can attain. This is upon the theory that reasonable or ordinary care in a case of that kind is the highest care which human ingenuity can practically exercise, and that, as a matter of law, courts will hold every reasonably prudent and careful man to the exercise of the utmost care and diligence in protecting the public from the dangers necessarily incident to the carrying on of a hazardous business.

Where the facts of a case naturally lead equally intelligent persons honestly to entertain different views as to the degree of care resting upon a defendant, the court ought not to lay down a rule prescribing any particular or specific degree in that case. But where all minds concur—as they must in a case like the one we are now considering—in regarding the carrying on of a business as fraught with peril to the public inherent in the nature of the business itself, the court makes no mistake in defining the duty of those conducting it as the exercise of the utmost care. It was, therefore, not prejudicial error for the court to tell the jury in this case what the law requires of the defendant, viz., the highest degree of care in conducting its business.

Judgment affirmed.^[71]

79 LAKE ERIE & WESTERN R. CO. v. FORD Supreme Court, Indiana, October 23, 1906. Reported in 167 Indiana Reports, 205.

Gillett, J. Complaint by appellee to recover damages for loss of property by fire, by reason of the alleged negligence of appellant. There was a verdict and judgment in favor of appellee.^[72]

Appellant complains of appellee’s instructions five and six, which were given by the court in the order indicated by their numbers. They are as follows: “(5) It is the duty of a railroad to use all reasonable precaution in running and operating its trains, and in providing its engines with proper spark-arresters, so as to prevent injury to the property of others by sparks or fire emitted or thrown therefrom. (6) If you believe from all of the evidence and circumstances in the case that at the time and prior to the destruction of the property of the plaintiff, as alleged in his complaint, there were a number of wooden buildings and structures standing on either side of the defendant’s track and in close proximity thereto, including the barn or stable of said Melissa McFall in the town of Hobbs, and at such time it was, and for some time prior thereto it had been, unusually dry, thereby 80rendering such wood buildings and structures, including the barn or stable of said Melissa McFall, and also the property of the plaintiff herein, unusually dry, inflammable, and easily set on fire by sparks and coals of fire emitted from defendant’s engines in passing through said town, and that there was also at the time, and for several hours prior thereto had been, a strong wind blowing continuously across the defendant’s track, in the direction of the barn or stable of said Melissa McFall, and the wooden buildings and structures near the defendant’s track, including the property of the plaintiff herein, which greatly and unusually increased the danger and risk of setting fire to such buildings by sparks and coals of fire emitted or thrown from its engine in passing through said town, over ordinary times and conditions, and all of which facts and conditions the defendant knew at the time, the defendant, under such circumstances, would be required to use a greater degree of care in operating and running its engines through said town to prevent injury to such buildings or property by sparks or coals of fire emitted or thrown from its engine, than it would at ordinary times and under ordinary conditions.”

Assuming, without deciding, that it was not error for the court, in its fifth instruction, to use the term “reasonable precaution,” instead of the preferable one, “ordinary care,”^[73] and assuming further, since the care that the company was required to exercise was, so far as the element of law was concerned, to be measured by a fixed standard, which was to be fully complied with (Wharton, Negligence [2d ed.], § 46), that it was proper to use the expression “all reasonable precaution,” the question arises whether it is not likely that the jury was misled by the charge in the next instruction that in the circumstances therein hypothetically stated “a greater degree of care” was required than in ordinary conditions. The sixth instruction would have been proper, had the court charged, after stating to the jury hypothetically the conditions which existed, leaving it to them to determine whether the danger was increased, that, in the event they so found, it was their duty, in determining whether reasonable or ordinary care had been exercised, to consider the increased danger of fire, yet we cannot say that this was the fair meaning of the words in which said instruction was couched.

There has been much discussion in the books concerning the correctness of the old doctrine as to degrees of negligence. New York Central R. Co. v. Lockwood, (1873) 17 Wall. 357, 21 L. Ed. 627; Steamboat New World v. King, (1853) 16 How. 469, 14 L. Ed. 1019; Ohio, etc., R. Co. v. Selby, (1874) 47 Ind. 471, 17 Am. Rep. 719; Pennsylvania Co. v. Sinclair, (1878) 62 Ind. 301, 30 Am. Rep. 185; Wharton, Negligence (2d ed.), § 44; 6 Albany L. J. 313; 2 Ames & 81Smith, Cases on Torts, 143; 21 Am. and Eng. Ency. Law (2d ed.), 459, and cases cited. While we apprehend that the adverse opinions which have been expressed concerning such doctrine were not intended to be understood as militating against the view that the legal standard of care is not the same in all relations, or to discountenance the practice of charging the jury in terms that indicate the extent of care required, as great, ordinary, or slight (1 Shearman & Redfield, Negligence [5th ed.], § 47), yet the point which we wish to enforce now is that in all cases negligence consists simply in a failure to measure up to the legal standard of care. It was said by Willes, J., in Grill v. General Iron Screw, etc., Co., (1866) L. R. 1 C. P. 600, 611: “Confusion has arisen from regarding negligence as a positive instead of a negative word. It is really the absence of such care as it was the duty of the defendant to use.”

Here we admittedly have a case in which it was the duty of the company to exercise ordinary care, but what does an instruction mean that informs the jury that in certain circumstances a greater degree of care is required, when it has for a background an instruction, which is applicable to all circumstances, that all reasonable precaution must be used? We think that in such a case the jury would understand that more than ordinary care was required, and it is not improbable that the effect of giving such an instruction, following an instruction like 5, would be to lead the jury to infer that the defendant’s duty was raised by the circumstances recited to a pitch of intensity that could not reasonably have been attained.

It was said by this court in Meredith v. Reed, (1866) 26 Ind. 334, 337: “What is ordinary care in some cases, would be carelessness in others. The law regards the circumstances surrounding each case, and the nature of the animal or machinery under control. Greater care is required to be taken of a stallion than of a mare; so in the management of a steam engine, greater care is necessary than in the use of a plough. Yet it is all ordinary care.” The legal standard of care required in a particular relationship is always the same, although the amount of care thus required depends upon the particular circumstances. Cleveland, etc., R. Co. v. Terry, (1858) 8 Ohio St. 570; Weiser v. Broadway, etc., St. R. Co., (1895) 6 Ohio Dec. 215. As has been observed by a modern writer: “This standard may vary in fact, but not in law.” 2 Jaggard, Torts, p. 819. In an article in 3 [6] Albany, L. J. 314, it is said: “The ratio, proportion or correspondence of diligence to circumstances, of care to surroundings, is fixed and identical. And, in determining a question of diligence or negligence in either case [as between two cases previously used by way of illustration], it would be only necessary to apply the same rule to varying circumstances and persons, to demand the same ratio between varying extremes. And it is not too much to assert that all the perplexity and misunderstanding on the subject of diligence and negligence are 82due to the habit of confounding the specific acts and circumstances, which must always vary, with the ratio or relation between them, which remains always the same.”

In 13 Am. and Eng. Ency. Law (2d ed.), 416, it is said: “The very statement of the general rule that reasonable care is required to prevent injuries to others from fire, implies that what is reasonable care must depend upon the circumstances of each particular case. It is, however, inaccurate to say, as many of the cases do, that the degree of care varies with the particular circumstances. It is only reasonable care that is required in any case; but the greater the danger, or the more likely the communication of fire and the ignition of the property of others, the more precautions and the closer vigilance reasonable care requires.” As above suggested, cases can be found in which it is stated that the degree of care to be used depends upon the danger, but, as has been observed by this court, it is not every statement of the law as found in an opinion or text-book, however well and accurately put, which can properly be embodied in an instruction. Garfield v. State, (1881) 74 Ind. 60. The viciousness of the instruction in question lies in its tendency to lead the jury to infer that the legal standard of ordinary care was raised by the circumstances recited, thus making possible the inference that a great but undefined extent of care was required, whereas all that the law exacted was the ordinary care which the situation demanded, or such care as it is to be assumed that an ordinarily prudent man would exercise in the circumstances, were the risk his own.^[74]

In this case the acts and omissions which the complaint charged as negligent were various, so that the question of what was ordinary care arose in a number of ways, and we can only conclude, in view of the misleading character of the instruction under consideration, that prejudicial error has intervened.

Judgment reversed, and a new trial ordered.^[75]

83 TRACY v. WOOD United States Circuit Court, District of Rhode Island, November Term, 1822. Reported in 3 Mason (U. S. Circuit Court), 132.

Assumpsit for negligence in losing 764½ doubloons, intrusted to the defendant to be carried from New York to Boston, as a gratuitous bailee. The gold was put up in two distinct bags, one within the other, and at the trial, upon the general issue, it appeared that the defendant, who was a money broker, brought them on board of the steamboat bound from New York to Providence; that in the morning while the steamboat lay at New York, and a short time before sailing, one of the bags was discovered to be lost, and that the other bag was left by the defendant on a table in his valise in the cabin, for a few moments only, while he went on deck to send information of the supposed loss to the plaintiffs, there being then a large number of passengers on board, and the loss being publicly known among them. On the defendant’s return the second bag was also missing and after every search no trace of the manner of the loss could be ascertained. The valise containing both bags was brought on board by the defendant on the preceding evening, and put by him in a berth in the forward cabin. He left it there all night, having gone in the evening to the theatre, and on his return having slept in the middle cabin. The defendant had his own money to a considerable amount in the same valise. There was evidence to show that he made inquiries on board, if the valise would be safe, and that he was informed, that if it contained articles of value, it had better be put into the custody of the captain’s clerk in the bar, under lock and key. There were many other circumstances in the case. The argument at the trial turned wholly on the question of gross negligence, and all the facts were fully commented on by counsel. But as the case is intended only to present the discussion on the question of law, it is not thought necessary to recapitulate them.^[76]

Story, J., after summing up the facts, said, I agree to the law as laid down at the bar, that in cases of bailees without reward, they are 84liable only for gross negligence. Such are depositaries, or persons receiving deposits without reward for their care; and mandataries, or persons receiving goods to carry from one place to another without reward. The latter is the predicament of the defendant. He undertook to carry the gold in question for the plaintiff, gratuitously, from New York to Providence, and he is not responsible unless he has been guilty of gross negligence. Nothing in this case arises out of the personal character of the defendant, as broker. He is not shown to be either more or less negligent than brokers generally are; nor if he was, is that fact brought home to the knowledge of the plaintiffs. They confided the money to him as a broker of ordinary diligence and care, having no other knowledge of him; and, therefore, no question arises as to what would have been the case, if the plaintiffs had known him to be a very careless or a very attentive man. Jones’ Bail. 46. The language of the books, as to what constitutes gross negligence, or not, is sometimes loose and inaccurate from the general manner in which propositions are stated. When it is said, that gross negligence is equivalent to fraud, it is not meant that it cannot exist without fraud. There may be very gross negligence in cases where there is no pretence that the party has been guilty of fraud, though certainly such negligence is often presumptive of fraud. In determining what is gross negligence, we must take into consideration what is the nature of the thing bailed. If it be of little value, less care is required than if it be of great value. If a bag of apples were left in a street for a short time, without a person to guard it, it would certainly not be more than ordinary neglect. But if the bag were of jewels or gold, such conduct would be gross negligence. In short, care and diligence are to be proportional to the value of the goods, the temptation and facility of stealing them, and the danger of losing them. So Sir William Jones lays down the law. “Diamonds, gold, and precious trinkets,” says he, “ought from their nature to be kept with peculiar care, under lock and key; it would, therefore, be gross negligence in a depositary to leave such deposit in an open antechamber; and ordinary neglect, at least, to let them remain on the table, where they might possibly tempt his servants.” Jones’ Bail. 38, 46, 62. So in Smith v. Horne, 2 Moore’s R. 18, it was held to be gross negligence in the case of a carrier, under the usual notice of not being responsible for goods above £5 in value, to send goods in a cart with one man, when two were usually sent to see to the delivery of them. So in Booth v. Wilson, 1 Barn. & Ald. 59, it was held gross negligence in a gratuitous bailee to put a horse into a dangerous pasture. In Batson v. Donovan, 4 Barn. & Ald. 21, the general doctrine was admitted in the fullest terms. It appears to me that the true way of considering cases of this nature is, to consider whether the party has omitted that care which bailees, without hire, or mandataries of ordinary prudence usually take of property of this nature. If he has, then it constitutes a case of gross 85negligence. The question is not whether he has omitted that care, which very prudent persons usually take of their own property, for the omission of that would be but slight negligence; nor whether he has omitted that care which prudent persons ordinarily take of their own property, for that would be but ordinary negligence: but whether there be a want of that care, which men of common sense, however inattentive, usually take, or ought to be presumed to take of their property, for that is gross negligence. The contract of bailees without reward is not merely for good faith, but for such care as persons of common prudence in their situation usually bestow upon such property. If they omit such care, it is gross negligence.

The present is a case of a mandatary of money. Such property is by all persons, negligent as well as prudent, guarded with much greater care than common property. The defendant is a broker, accustomed to the use and transportation of money, and it must be presumed he is a person of ordinary diligence. He kept his own money in the same valise; and took no better care of it than of the plaintiff’s. Still if the jury are of opinion that he omitted to take that reasonable care of the gold which bailees without reward in his situation usually take, or which he himself usually took of such property, under such circumstances, he has been guilty of gross negligence.

Verdict for the plaintiffs for $5700, the amount of one bag of the gold; for the defendant as to the other bag.^[77]

86 DOLPHIN v. WORCESTER STREET R. CO. Supreme Judicial Court, Massachusetts, October 18, 1905. Reported in 189 Massachusetts Reports, 270.

Action of tort under Revised Laws, chapter 111, section 267, for the death of a passenger on a street railway.^[78]

87The material portions of the statute are as follows:—

“If a corporation which operates a railroad or a street railway, by reason of its negligence or by reason of the unfitness or gross negligence of its agents or servants, while engaged in its business,^[79] causes the death of a passenger, or of a person who is in the exercise of due care and who is not a passenger or in the employ of such corporation, it shall be punished by a fine of not less than five hundred nor more than five thousand dollars, which shall be recovered by an indictment,” and shall be paid to the executor or administrator, to the use of the widow and children or the next of kin. “Such corporation shall also be liable in damages in the sum of not less than five hundred nor more than five thousand dollars, which shall be assessed with reference to the degree of culpability of the corporation or of its servants or agents, and shall be recovered in an action of tort ... by the executor or administrator of the deceased for the use of the persons hereinbefore specified in the case of an indictment.... But no executor or administrator shall, for the same cause, avail himself of more than one of the remedies given by the provisions of this section.”

At the trial the plaintiff requested the following rulings:—

“6. When the duty of exercising the highest degree of care is incumbent upon the defendant, any failure upon the part of its servants to exercise that degree of care is gross negligence.

“7. The term ‘gross’ in the allegation gross negligence, when used with reference to the degree of care required and not fulfilled, is merely an expletive, when the degree of care required is the very highest.

“8. There are no degrees of negligence.”

The plaintiff excepted to the refusal of the judge to give the rulings requested, and to such parts of the charge as were in conflict with them. The defendant had a verdict, and the case is here on these exceptions.

Loring, J.... The judge was right in refusing to give the sixth ruling asked for. A failure to exercise the highest degree of care is slight negligence.

3. The seventh ruling requested was wrong. The term “gross negligence” in a case where the degree of care due is the highest degree of care means that there has been a gross failure to exercise that degree of care.^[80]

4. There are degrees of care in cases under R. L. c. 111, § 267, by force of that act.^[81]

Exceptions overruled.

88 CLEVELAND ROLLING MILL CO. v. CORRIGAN Supreme Court, Ohio, February 26, 1889. Reported in 46 Ohio State Reports, 283.

Error to Circuit Court of Cuyahoga County.

The plaintiff below, John Corrigan, an infant under the age of fourteen, by his guardian, sued the Rolling Mill Company for damages suffered while in the defendants’ employ, and which he alleged were caused by their negligence.

The answer of the defendants alleged, among other defences, that the injury occurred solely through the plaintiff’s fault.

As to this ground of defence, the Court instructed the jury in part as follows:—

It was the duty of the plaintiff to use ordinary care and prudence; just such care and prudence as a boy of his age, of ordinary care and prudence, would use under like or similar circumstances. You should take into consideration his age, the judgment and knowledge he possessed.

Verdict and judgment for plaintiff.

The Company filed its petition in error.^[82]

Williams, J. The only questions presented in this case are those arising upon the special instructions given by the Court in response to the request of the jury. These instructions, the plaintiff in error contends, are erroneous in their entirety and in detail.

1. First, it is claimed that the Court erred in the statement of the plaintiff’s duty, in the opening proposition of the charge, wherein the jury were instructed that “it was the duty of the plaintiff to use ordinary care,” which the Court defined to be “just such care as boys of that age, of ordinary care and prudence, would use under like circumstances,” and that the jury “should take into consideration the age of the plaintiff, and the judgment and knowledge he possessed.” We have found no decision of this Court upon the subject of the contributory negligence of infants, or the measure of care required of them. Elsewhere the decisions are conflicting. Each of three different rules on the subject has found judicial sanction. One rule requires of children the same standard of care, judgment, and discretion, in anticipating and avoiding injury, as adults are bound to exercise.^[83] Another 89wholly exempts small children from the doctrine of contributory negligence. Between these extremes a third and more reasonable rule has grown into favor, and is now supported by the great weight of authority, which is, that a child is held to no greater care than is usually possessed by children of the same age. Authors and judges, however, do not always employ the same language in giving expression to the rule. In Beach on Contributory Negligence, sec. 46, it is thus expressed: “An infant plaintiff who, on the one hand, is not so young as to escape entirely all legal accountability, and on the other hand is not so mature as to be held to the responsibility of an adult is, of course, in cases involving the question of negligence, to be held responsible for ordinary care, and ordinary care must mean, in this connection, that degree of care and prudence which may reasonably be expected of a child.” The decisions enforcing this rule, that children are to be held responsible only for such degree of care and prudence as may reasonably be expected of them, taking due account of their age and the particular circumstances, are very numerous. “It is well settled,” says Mr. Justice Hunt in Railroad Company v. Stout, 17 Wall. 657, “that the conduct of an infant of tender years is not to be judged by the same rule which governs that of an adult.... The care and caution required of a child is according to his maturity and capacity only, and this is to be determined in each case by the circumstances of that case.” In Shearman & Redfield on Negligence, sec. 73, it is said to be “now settled by the overwhelming weight of authority that a child is held, as far as he is personally concerned, only to the exercise of such care and discretion as is reasonably to be expected from children of his own age.” Another author says, “A child is only bound to exercise such a degree of care as children of his particular age may be presumed capable of exercising.” Whittaker’s Smith on Neg., 411.

This rule appears to rest upon sound reason as well as authority. To constitute contributory negligence in any case there must be a want of ordinary care and a proximate connection between such want of care and the injury complained of; and ordinary care is that degree of care which persons of ordinary care and prudence are accustomed to use under similar circumstances. Children constitute a class of persons of less discretion and judgment than adults, of which all reasonably informed men are aware. Hence ordinarily prudent men reasonably expect that children will exercise only the care and prudence of children, and no greater degree of care should be required of them than is usual under the circumstances among careful and prudent persons of the class to which they belong. We think it a sound rule, therefore, that in the application of the doctrine of contributory negligence to children, in actions by them or in their behalf for injuries occasioned by the negligence of others, their conduct should not be judged by the same rule which governs that of adults, and while it is 90their duty to exercise ordinary care to avoid the injuries of which they complain, ordinary care for them is that degree of care which children of the same age, of ordinary care and prudence, are accustomed to exercise under similar circumstances.

That portion of the charge of the Court under discussion is in substantial conformity to this conclusion. The care and prudence which a boy of the plaintiff’s age of ordinary care and prudence “would use under like and similar circumstances,” as expressed in the charge, is such care as “is reasonably to be expected from a boy of his age,” or “which boys of his age usually exercise,” as the books express it. No different effect is given to the charge of which the plaintiff in error can complain, by the direction to the jury to take into consideration the age of the boy “and the judgment and knowledge he possessed.” This did not diminish the degree of care required by the previous portion of the instruction.

Judgment affirmed.^[84]

STONE v. DRY DOCK R. CO. Court of Appeals, New York, June 4, 1889. Reported in 115 New York Reports, 104.

Appeal from judgment of the General Term of the Supreme Court in the first judicial department, entered upon an order made October 26, 1887, which affirmed a judgment in favor of defendant, entered upon an order nonsuiting plaintiff on trial.

This was an action to recover damages for the alleged negligence in causing the death of plaintiff’s intestate, a child of seven years and three or four months old.

The facts, so far as material, are stated in the opinion.^[85]

91Andrews, J. The nonsuit was placed on the ground that an infant seven years of age was sui juris, and that the act of the child in crossing the street in front of the approaching car was negligence on her part, which contributed to her death, and barred a recovery. We think the case should have been submitted to the jury.

The negligence of the driver of the car is conceded. His conduct in driving rapidly along Canal Street at its intersection with Orchard Street, without looking ahead, but with his eyes turned to the inside of the car, was grossly negligent. Mangam v. Brooklyn R. R. Co., 38 N. Y. 455; Railroad Co. v. Gladmon, 15 Wall. 401. It cannot be asserted as a proposition of law that a child just passed seven years of age is sui juris, so as to be chargeable with negligence. The law does not define when a child becomes sui juris. Kunz v. City of Troy, 104 N. Y. 344. Infants under seven years of age are deemed incapable of committing crime, and by the common law such incapacity presumptively continues until the age of fourteen. An infant between those ages was regarded as within the age of possible discretion, but on a criminal charge against an infant between those years the burden was upon the prosecutor to show that the defendant had intelligence and maturity of judgment sufficient to render him capable of harboring a criminal intent. 1 Arch. 11. The Penal Code preserves the rule of the common law except that it fixes the age of twelve instead of fourteen as the time when the presumption of incapacity ceases. Penal Code, §§ 18, 19.

In administering civil remedies the law does not fix any arbitrary period when an infant is deemed capable of exercising judgment and discretion. It has been said in one case that an infant three or four years of age could not be regarded as sui juris, and the same was said in another case of an infant five years of age. Mangam v. Brooklyn R. R., supra; Fallon v. Central Park, N. & E. R. R. R. Co., 64 N. Y. 13. On the other hand, it was said in Cosgrove v. Ogden, 49 N. Y. 255, that a lad six years of age could not be assumed to be incapable of protecting himself from danger in streets or roads, and in another case that a boy of eleven years of age was competent to be trusted in the streets of a city. McMahon v. Mayor, &c., 33 N. Y. 642. From the nature of the case it is impossible to prescribe a fixed period when a child becomes sui juris. Some children reach the point earlier than others. It depends upon many things, such as natural capacity, physical conditions, training, habits of life, and surroundings. These and other circumstances may enter into the question. It becomes, therefore, a question of fact for the jury where the inquiry is material unless the child is of so very tender years that the Court can safely decide the fact. The trial Court misapprehended the case of Wendell v. New York Central Railroad Company, 91 N. Y. 420, in supposing that it decided, as a proposition of law, that a child of seven years was capable of exercising judgment so as to be chargeable with contributory 92negligence. It was assumed in that case, both on the trial and on appeal, that the child whose conduct was in question was capable of understanding, and did understand the peril of the situation, and the evidence placed it beyond doubt that he recklessly encountered the danger which resulted in his death. The boy was familiar with the crossing, and, eluding the flagman who tried to bar his way, attempted to run across the track in front of an approaching train in plain sight, and unfortunately slipped and fell, and was run over and killed. It appeared that he was a bright, active boy, accustomed to go to school and on errands alone, and sometimes was intrusted with the duty of driving a horse and wagon, and that on previous occasions he had been stopped by the flagman while attempting to cross the track in front of an approaching train, and had been warned of the danger. The Court held, upon this state of facts, that the boy was guilty of culpable negligence. But the case does not decide, as matter of law, that all children of the age of seven years are sui juris.

We are inclined to the opinion that in an action for an injury to a child of tender years, based on negligence, who may or may not have been sui juris when the injury happened, and the fact is material as bearing upon the question of contributory negligence, the burden is upon the plaintiff to give some evidence that the party injured was not capable, as matter of fact, of exercising judgment and discretion. This rule would seem to be consistent with the principle now well settled in this State, that in an action for a personal injury, based on negligence, freedom from contributory negligence on the part of the party injured is an element of the cause of action. In the present case the only fact before the jury bearing upon the capacity of the child whose death was in question was that she was a girl seven years and three months old. This, we think, did not alone justify an inference that the child was incapable of exercising any degree of care. But, assuming that the child was chargeable with the exercise of some degree of care, we think it should have been left to the jury to determine whether she acted with that degree of prudence which might reasonably be expected, under the circumstances, of a child of her years. This measure of care is all that the law exacts in such a case. Thurber v. Harlem, B. M. & F. R. R. Co., 60 N. Y. 335.^[86]

Judgment reversed.

93 ILLINOIS IRON AND METAL COMPANY v. WEBER Supreme Court, Illinois, April 16, 1902. Reported in 196 Illinois Reports, 526.

Appeal by original defendants from the decision of the Appellate Court for the First District; 89 Ill. App. 368.

Plaintiff was a newsboy, between eleven and twelve years old, and his stand was at Dearborn and Monroe streets in the city of Chicago. He was going from his home, about four miles distant, to his place of business. By permission of the driver, he got on a wagon loaded with brick. He stood up on the rear of the wagon behind the box, and held on to the hind end-gate of the wagon. The wagon was one of a procession of loaded teams in a street-car track. The next wagon behind was owned by defendant. The end of the pole of defendant’s wagon struck the plaintiff’s leg, inflicting a serious wound. Plaintiff had been in the paper business since he was nine years old, and had been in the habit of riding down town on wagons.

94Under instructions, the substance of which is stated in the opinion, the jury found a verdict for plaintiff.^[87]

Cartwright, J.... The first two instructions each directed the jury to find the defendant guilty, provided they should believe, from the evidence, the existence of certain facts. One of the essential facts which the law required to be found was that the plaintiff was in the exercise of ordinary care for his own safety, and each of those instructions informed the jury that the fact was proved if he was in the exercise of ordinary care for a boy of his age. They directed the jury to return a verdict for the plaintiff if they found he was in the exercise of ordinary care for a boy of his age and the defendant was negligent and the injury resulted. That was not a correct rule of law, since the question of care was not to be determined alone by the plaintiff’s age, but also from his intelligence, experience, and ability to understand and comprehend dangers and care for himself. The case was one in which the defendant was entitled to correct instructions upon that question. It was a question whether plaintiff was not guilty of negligence in riding where he did, in a procession of teams, outside of the box, behind the end-gate of the wagon. The position was a dangerous one, not provided or used for passengers or intended for such use. Plaintiff had a right to ride on the wagon with the driver’s consent, but it was his duty to use reasonable care for his own safety. There was a string of heavily loaded teams in the car tracks, where it was difficult, if not impossible, to turn out, and the difficulty and danger in stopping when one of a procession stops is matter of common knowledge. Cases cited as to the liability of common carriers of passengers where a car is full and a passenger rides upon the platform have no bearing on this question. Passengers are accustomed to be upon platforms and are sometimes compelled to ride there, and different rules are applied to a common carrier from those governing parties not in that relation. There was no necessity whatever for the plaintiff assuming the position that he did. These facts were not controverted or in dispute, but are gathered from his own testimony. If the damage to the plaintiff was caused by his own negligence in assuming such a position, he could not recover. In determining that question his age was to be taken into account, but it could not be said, as a matter of law, that he was too young to exercise any care for his personal safety or that he was incapable of negligence. Unquestionably, he was capable of exercising some degree of judgment and discretion and some degree of care for his own safety. He had lived in the city and had been engaged in business, and was accustomed to ride on wagons. Judge Thompson, in his Commentaries on Law of Negligence (vol. I, sect. 309), says: “Two lads of equal age and natural capacity, one of them raised in the country and the other in the city, might approach a 95given danger, and the one would be perfectly competent to care for himself while the other would be helpless in the face of it. Therefore, the capacity, the intelligence, the knowledge, the experience, and the discretion of the child are always evidentiary circumstances,—circumstances with reference to which each party has the right to introduce evidence, which evidence is to be considered by the jury.” The rule established by our own decisions is, that age is not the only element to be considered, but that intelligence, capacity, and experience are also to be taken into account. Weick v. Lander, 75 Ill. 93; City of Chicago v. Keefe, 114 Id. 222; Illinois Central Railroad Company v. Slater, 129 Id. 91.

Reversed and remanded.^[88]

BULLOCK v. BABCOCK Supreme Court of Judicature, New York, October, 1829. Reported in 3 Wendell, 391.

This was an action of trespass, assault, and battery.

In 1816, the defendant, then being about twelve years of age, shooting an arrow from a bow, struck the plaintiff and put out one of his eyes, the plaintiff being then between nine and ten years of age. The plaintiff and defendant were schoolmates. The boys attending the school were assembled near the school-house. One of them had a bow and arrow, with which he and the defendant had been shooting at a mark. Some remark was made by the plaintiff, when the defendant said, “I will shoot you,” and took the bow and arrow from another boy who then held it. The plaintiff ran into the school-house and hid behind a fire-board standing before the fire-place in the school-room. The defendant followed to the door of the school-room, and saying, 96“See me shoot that basket,” discharged the arrow. At that moment the plaintiff raised his head above the fire-board, and the arrow struck him. There was a basket standing on a desk in the direction that the arrow was aimed. When the arrow was shot, there were a number of boys in the school-room. There had been no quarrel between the boys. The plaintiff, however, on entering the school-house was frightened, and said he was afraid he would be shot. The plaintiff suffered great pain for two months, became blind of one eye, and for five years was disabled from attending school in consequence of the weakness of sight of the other eye. His mother became a widow; and when the plaintiff was able to attend school, her poverty prevented his receiving an ordinary education. This suit was commenced in 1827, within a year after the plaintiff attained his age.

The judge charged the jury that the shooting the arrow in the school-room where there were a number of boys assembled was an unlawful act; that it appeared to him to have been, at the least, grossly negligent and unjustifiable; and that, if the jury thought so, they ought to find a verdict for the plaintiff, with damages. The defendant excepted. The jury found for the plaintiff, with $180 damages, and a motion was now made to set aside the verdict.

By the Court, Marcy, J. It is not, I apprehend, necessary for us to say whether the judge erred or not in his remark to the jury that, under the circumstances of the case, the act of the defendant in shooting the arrow in the school-room, where there were a number of scholars, was not lawful; for, if the act in itself was lawful, and there was not a proper care to guard against consequences injurious to others, the actor must be held responsible for such consequences.

In ordinary cases, if the injury is not the effect of an unavoidable accident, the person by whom it is inflicted is liable to respond in damages to the sufferer. Where, in shooting at butts, the archer’s arrow glanced and struck another, it was holden to be a trespass. Year-Book, 21 H. VII. fol. 28. So where a number of persons were lawfully exercising themselves at arms, one, whose gun accidentally went off, was held liable in trespass for the injury occasioned by the accident. Weaver v. Ward. Where, in a dark night, the defendant got on the wrong side of the road, and an injury ensued to the person of the plaintiff, trespass for the damage was sustained. Leame v. Bray, 3 East, 593. It is decided in the case of Wakeman v. Robinson, if the accident happen entirely without the fault of the defendant, or any blame being imputable to him, an action will not lie. In that case, the blame imputable to the defendant was, that, his horse being young and spirited, he used him without a curb rein; that in his alarm he probably pulled the wrong rein; and that he ought to have continued on in a straight course. The blame fairly imputed to the defendant, it will be perceived, must have been slight indeed, as it certainly was in the case of the injury done by the glancing of the arrow when shooting at a mark 97(a lawful act), and by the accidental discharge of the musket at a training; and yet, in each of these cases, an action for the injury was maintained. Unless a rule is to be applied to this case different from that applicable to a transaction between adults, the proof was most abundant to charge the defendant with the consequences of the injury. Infants, in the same manner as adults, are liable for trespass, slander, assault, &c.^[89] Bing. on Infancy, 110; 8 T. R. 335; 16 Mass. Rep. 389; 982 Inst. 328. Where infants are the actors, that might probably be considered an unavoidable accident which would not be so considered where the actors are adults; but such a distinction, if it exists, does not apply to this case. The liability to answer in damages for trespass does not depend upon the mind or capacity of the actors; for idiots and lunatics, as we see by the case reported in Hobart, are responsible in the action of trespass for injuries inflicted by them. 1 Chit. Pl. 66.

Motion for a new trial denied.^[90]

Section IV Proof of Negligence^[91]

METROPOLITAN RAILWAY COMPANY v. JACKSON In the House of Lords, December 13, 1877. Reported in 3 Appeal Cases, 193.

The Lord Chancellor (Lord Cairns):^[92]—

My Lords, in this case an action was brought by the respondent against the Metropolitan Railway Company for negligence in not carrying the respondent safely as a passenger on the railway, and for injuring his thumb by the act of one of the appellants’ servants in suddenly and violently closing the door of the railway carriage.

The question is, Was there at the trial any evidence of this negligence which ought to have been left to the jury? The Court of Common Pleas, consisting of Lord Coleridge, Mr. Justice Brett, and Mr. Justice Grove, were of opinion that there was such evidence. The Court of Appeal was equally divided; the Lord Chief Justice and Lord Justice of Appeal Amphlett holding that there was evidence, the Lord Chief Baron and Lord Justice of Appeal Bramwell holding that there was not.

99The facts of the case are very short. The respondent in the evening of the 18th of July, 1872, took a third-class ticket from Moorgate Street to Westbourne Park, and got into a third-class compartment; the compartment was gradually filled up, and when it left King’s Cross all the seats were occupied. At Gower Street Station three persons got in and were obliged to stand up. There was no evidence to show that the attention of the company’s servants was drawn to the fact of an extra number being in the compartment; but there was evidence that the respondent remonstrated at their getting in with the persons so getting in, and a witness who travelled in the same compartment stated that he did not see a guard or porter at Gower Street.

At Portland Road, the next station, the three extra passengers still remained standing up in the compartment. The door of the compartment was opened and then shut; but there was no evidence to show by whom either act was done. Just as the train was starting from Portland Road there was a rush, and the door of the compartment was opened a second time by persons trying to get in. The respondent, who had up to this time kept his seat, partly rose and held up his hand to prevent any more passengers coming in. After the train had moved, a porter pushed away the people who were trying to get in, and slammed the door to, just as the train was entering the tunnel. At that very moment the respondent, by the motion of the train, fell forward and put his hand upon one of the hinges of the carriage door to save himself, and at that moment, by the door being slammed to, the respondent’s thumb was caught and injured.

The case as to negligence having been left to the jury, the jury found a verdict for the respondent with £50 damages. There was not, at your lordships’ bar, any serious controversy as to the principles applicable to a case of this description. The judge has a certain duty to discharge, and the jurors have another and a different duty. The judge has to say whether any facts have been established by evidence from which negligence may be reasonably inferred; the jurors have to say whether, from those facts, when submitted to them, negligence ought to be inferred. It is, in my opinion, of the greatest importance in the administration of justice that these separate functions should be maintained, and should be maintained distinct. It would be a serious inroad on the province of the jury, if, in a case where there are facts from which negligence may reasonably be inferred, the judge were to withdraw the case from the jury upon the ground that, in his opinion, negligence ought not to be inferred; and it would, on the other hand, place in the hands of the jurors a power which might be exercised in the most arbitrary manner, if they were at liberty to hold that negligence might be inferred from any state of facts whatever. To take the instance of actions against railway companies: a company might be unpopular, unpunctual, and irregular in its service; badly equipped as to its staff; unaccommodating to the public; notorious, 100perhaps for accidents occurring on the line; and when an action was brought for the consequences of an accident, jurors, if left to themselves, might, upon evidence of general carelessness, find a verdict against the company in a case where the company was really blameless. It may be said that this would be set right by an application to the court in banc, on the ground that the verdict was against evidence; but it is to be observed that such an application, even if successful, would only result in a new trial; and on a second trial, and even on subsequent trials, the same thing might happen again.

In the present case I am bound to say that I do not find any evidence from which, in my opinion, negligence could reasonably be inferred. The negligence must in some way connect itself, or be connected by evidence, with the accident. It must be, if I might invent an expression founded upon a phrase in the civil law, incuria dans locum injuriae. In the present case there was no doubt negligence in the company’s servants, in allowing more passengers than the proper number to get in at the Gower Street Station; and it may also have been negligence if they saw these supernumerary passengers, or if they ought to have seen them, at Portland Road, not to have then removed them; but there is nothing, in my opinion, in this negligence which connects itself with the accident that took place. If, when the train was leaving Portland Road, the overcrowding had any effect on the movements of the respondent; if it had any effect on the particular portion of the carriage where he was sitting, if it made him less a master of his actions when he stood up or when he fell forward, this ought to have been made matter of evidence; but no evidence of the kind was given.

As regards what took place at Portland Road, I am equally unable to see any evidence of negligence connected with the accident, or indeed of any negligence whatever. The officials cannot, in my opinion, be held bound to prevent intending passengers on the platform opening a carriage door with a view of looking or getting into the carriage. They are bound to have a staff which would be able to prevent such persons getting in where the carriage was already full, and this staff they had, for the case finds that the porter pushed away the persons who were attempting to get in. So also with regard to shutting the door; these persons had opened the door, and thereupon it was not only proper but necessary that the door should be shut by the porter; and, as the train was on the point of passing into a tunnel, he could not shut it otherwise than quickly or in this sense violently....

Lord Blackburn:—

My Lords, I also am of opinion that in this case the judgment should be reversed, and a nonsuit entered. On a trial by jury it is, I conceive, undoubted that the facts are for the jury, and the law for the judge. It is not, however, in many cases practicable completely to sever the law from the facts.

101But I think it has always been considered a question of law to be determined by the judge, subject, of course, to review whether there is evidence which, if it is believed, and the counter-evidence, if any, not believed, would establish the facts in controversy. It is for the jury to say whether and how far the evidence is to be believed. And if the facts, as to which evidence is given, are such that from them a farther inference of fact may legitimately be drawn, it is for the jury to say whether that inference is to be drawn or not. But it is for the judge to determine, subject to review, as a matter of law whether from those facts that farther inference may legitimately be drawn.

My Lords, in delivering the considered judgment of the Exchequer Chamber in Ryder v. Wombwell, Law Rep. 4 Ex. 32, 38, Willes, J., says: “Such a question is one of mixed law and fact; in so far as it is a question of fact, it must be determined by a jury, subject no doubt to the control of the court, who may set aside the verdict, and submit the question to the decision of another jury; but there is in every case a preliminary question, which is one of law, viz., whether there is any evidence on which the jury could properly find the verdict for the party on whom the onus of proof lies. If there is not, the judge ought to withdraw the question from the jury, and direct a nonsuit if the onus is on the plaintiff, or direct a verdict for the plaintiff if the onus is on the defendant. It was formerly considered necessary in all cases to leave the question to the jury, if there was any evidence, even a scintilla, in support of the case; but it is now settled that the question for the judge (subject, of course, to review), is, as is stated by Maule, J., in Jewell v. Parr, 13 C. B. 909, 916, ‘not whether there is literally no evidence, but whether there is none that ought reasonably to satisfy the jury that the fact sought to be proved is established.’”

He afterwards observes, Law Rep. 4 Ex. 42, very truly in my opinion, “There is no doubt a possibility in all cases where the judges have to determine whether there is evidence on which the jury may reasonably find a fact, that the judges may differ in opinion, and it is possible that the majority may be wrong. Indeed, whenever a decision of the court below on such a point is reversed, the majority must have been so either in the court above or the court below. This is an infirmity which must affect all tribunals.”

I quite agree that this is so, and it is an evil. But I think it a far slighter evil than it would be to leave in the hands of the jury a power which might be exercised in the most arbitrary manner....

[The concurring opinions of Lord O’Hagan and Lord Gordon are omitted.]

Judgment given for the plaintiff in the court below reversed, and a nonsuit to be entered.^[93]

102 KEARNEY v. LONDON, BRIGHTON & SOUTH COAST R. CO. In the Queen’s Bench, June 15, 1870. Reported in Law Reports, 5 Queen’s Bench, 411.

Declaration, that the defendants were possessed of a bridge over a certain public highway, and it became their duty to maintain and keep in repair the bridge, so that it should not be injurious to any person passing under it; yet the defendants so negligently maintained the bridge, that while the plaintiff was lawfully passing under the bridge a portion of the materials of the bridge fell down and injured the plaintiff.

103Plea: Not guilty. Issue joined.

At the trial before Hannen, J., at the sittings in Middlesex after Michaelmas Term, 1869, it appeared, according to the plaintiff’s evidence, that the plaintiff, on the 20th of January, 1869, was passing along the Blue Anchor Road, Bermondsey, under the railway bridge of the defendants, when a brick fell and injured him on the shoulder. A train had passed just previously, but whether it was a train of the defendants, or of another company (whose trains also pass over the bridge), did not appear. The bridge had been built three years, and is an iron girder bridge resting on iron piers, on one side, and on a perpendicular brick wall with pilasters, on the other, and the brick fell from the top of one of the pilasters, where one of the girders rested on the pilaster.

The defendants called no witnesses,^[94] but rested their defence on there being no evidence of negligence in the defendants; and also on the ground that the injury to the plaintiff’s shoulder was not really caused by the falling of the brick.

As to the evidence of negligence, the learned judge told the jury that if they thought the bare circumstance of a brick falling out was not evidence of negligence, they would find for the defendants; if they thought otherwise, for the plaintiff; and the court would determine whether there was legal evidence of negligence or not, as to which he should reserve leave to the defendants to move.

The jury found a verdict for the plaintiff for 25l.

A rule was obtained to enter a nonsuit, on the ground that there was no evidence of negligence to leave to the jury.^[95]

Cockburn, C. J. As we have had the whole matter carefully brought before us, with the cases bearing upon the subject, I think we should gain nothing by taking further time to consider it; and, therefore, although I regret to say we are not unanimous upon the point, I think it is better to dispose of the case at once.

My own opinion is, that this is a case to which the principle res ipsa loquitur is applicable, though it is certainly as weak a case as can well be conceived in which that maxim could be taken to apply. But I think the maxim is applicable; and my reason for saying so is this. The company who have constructed this bridge were bound to construct it in a proper manner, and to use all reasonable care and diligence in keeping it in such a state of repair that no damage from its defective condition should occur to those who passed under it, the public having a right to pass under it. Now we have the fact that a brick falls out of this structure, and injures the plaintiff. The proximate cause appears to have been the looseness of the brick, and the vibration of a train passing over the bridge, acting upon the defective 104condition of the brick. It is clear, therefore, that the structure in reference to this brick was out of repair. It is clear that it was incumbent on the defendants to use reasonable care and diligence, and I think the brick being loose affords, prima facie, a presumption that they had not used reasonable care and diligence. It is true that it is possible that, from changes in the temperature, a brick might get into the condition in which this brickwork appears to have been from causes operating so speedily as to prevent the possibility of any diligence and care applied to such a purpose intervening in due time, so as to prevent an accident. But inasmuch as our experience of these things is, that bricks do not fall out when brickwork is kept in a proper state of repair, I think where an accident of this sort happens, the presumption is that it is not the frost of a single night, or of many nights, that would cause such a change in the state of this brickwork as that a brick would fall out in this way; and it must be presumed that there was not that inspection and that care on the part of the defendants which it was their duty to apply. On the other hand, I admit most readily that a very little evidence would have sufficed to rebut the presumption which arises from the manifestly defective state of this brickwork. It might have been shown that many causes, over which the defendants had no control, might cause this defect in so short a time as that it could not be reasonably expected that they should have inspected it in the interval. They might, if they were able, have shown that they had inspected the bridge continually, or that such a state of things could not be anticipated, and had never been heard of or known before. Anything which tended to rebut the presumption arising from an accident caused by the defective condition of the brickwork, which it was their duty to keep in a proper condition of repair, even if such evidence were but slight, might have sufficed; but the defendants chose to leave it on the naked state of facts proved by the plaintiff. Upon that naked state of facts it is not unimportant to see what might have been the cause of the defective condition of this brickwork. We have the fact, the datum, that the brickwork was in a defective condition, and we have it admitted that it was the defendants’ duty to use reasonable care and diligence to keep it in a proper condition. Where it is the duty of persons to do their best to keep premises, or a structure, of whatever kind it may be, in a proper condition, and we find it out of condition, and an accident happens therefrom, it is incumbent upon them to show that they used that reasonable care and diligence which they were bound to use, and the absence of which it seems to me may fairly be presumed from the fact that there was the defect from which the accident has arisen. Therefore, there was some evidence to go to the jury, however slight it may have been, of this accident having arisen from the negligence of the defendants; and it was incumbent on the defendants to give 105evidence rebutting the inference arising from the undisputed facts; that they have not done, and I therefore think this rule must be discharged.