Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. Daniels

OPINION BY: POWELL, J.

The petition alleges substantially the following state of facts: The plaintiff was driving an automobile on one of the streets of Savannah, and came to a place where the railroad company's tracks cross the street on an embankment several feet higher than the usual street level, so that the approaches to the crossing are on an incline. At this point the company maintains crossing bars, controlled from a signal-tower located near the crossing. When a train approaches the crossing the bars are lowered, thus excluding travelers from the tracks. When the bars are up, this is a signal to the public that they may cross without danger from the trains. The tracks approach the crossing on a curve, and persons traveling upon the street can not tell when a train is coming, otherwise than through observing the condition of the crossing bars. The man in the tower who controlled the bars had a view of the tracks, of the crossing, and of persons approaching the crossing from either direction. The plaintiff, as he approached the crossing, saw that the bars were up, indicating that the way was clear. As the approach was considerably up grade, he threw the levers, which control the spark and the mixture of gasoline vapor admitted into the engine, into such a position as to give the machine its maximum of eighteen horse-power. As he came upon the tracks the towerman suddenly lowered the bars on both sides of the crossing, thus penning him in upon the tracks. He threw his brakes on in full emergency and stopped the machine (the gasoline engine, as well as the automobile itself), but did not change the spark and gas levers. There were three tracks. He stopped on the first. The towerman cried out to him to move the machine, that a train was coming. He released the brakes, and, getting behind the machine, with an abnormal degree of strength caused by the excitement of the emergency, pushed the machine from the first track to the second track. The towerman cried to him again, telling him to move the machine, that the train was coming on the middle track. He gave it another shove, and just as he got it on to the third track the engine and cars dashed by on the middle track. The bars were then raised so that the plaintiff could proceed; but, according to the allegations of the petition, he was so unnerved and robbed of his ordinary senses by the fright which the situation had produced that he forgot the condition in which he had left his levers, and attempted to start the machine with the maximum power turned on. The result was that when he turned the crank, the engine "kicked back," threw him against the radiator of the machine, broke out several of his teeth, and inflicted other severe injuries upon his mouth and face. The operation of the automobile, and the mechanics, so to speak, of the situation, are set out in full. We do not know enough of the make-up and working of an automobile to give a brief description of all these things, but we hardly think it is necessary.

The defendant filed a general demurrer to the petition, insisting that under the allegations, the defendant's negligence can not be considered as the proximate cause of the plaintiff's injury; that the injury was not a natural or a reasonably to be anticipated effect of the defendant's act; that the plaintiff's injuries were the result of his own act in cranking the machine without exercising usual and ordinary precaution. The trial court overruled the demurrer, and the defendant brings error.

The state of facts presented in this case is unusual, and we have given it considerable study. The briefs of counsel for both sides are replete with citations of authorities. We have read and reread a multitude of cases on the subject of what relation must exist between a negligent act and an injury that follows, in order that the author of the one may be held liable in damages to the sufferer of the other. We have read of "proximate cause" and of "natural consequence," and of other phrases expressing the same general idea, until eyes have grown weak with reading and brain fagged out with trying to understand what learned judge after learned judge and learned law-writer after learned law-writer have said on the subject; and yet we realize that we have not pursued the subject further than to examine only a small percentage of the cases and of the text-books that we might have read. But the thought comes to us, that one may live in sight of the ocean for a lifetime, may sail upon it, may know its moods in the calm and in the storm, and yet not be able to answer some simple question as to a cup of cold water. He who so oft had studied with most critical and intelligent eyes the profusion of flowers in which England's gardens and fields abound confessed how little he knew of the "all in all" of the single and insignificant flower which he plucked from the crannied wall. Thus much we have said by way of explaining why in this opinion there is absence of citation of cases on a subject as to which cases so abound.

Cause and effect find their beginning and end in the limitless and unknowable. Therefore, courts, in their finitude, do not attempt to deal with cause and effect in any absolute degree, but only in such a limited way as is practical and as is within the scope of ordinary human understanding. Hence, arbitrary limits have been set; and such qualifying words as "proximate" and "natural" have come into use as setting the limits beyond which the courts will not look, in the attempt to trace the connection between a given cause and a given effect. A plaintiff comes into court alleging, as an effect, some injury that has been done to his person or to his property. He shows that antecedent to the injury a wrongful act of another person occurred, and that if this wrongful act had not occurred, the injury complained of would not (as human probabilities go) have occurred. We then say, in common speech, that the wrong was a cause of the injury. But to make such a standard (that if the cause had not existed, the effect would not have occurred) the basis of legal responsibility would soon prove very unsatisfactory; for a reductio ad absurdum may be promptly established by calling to mind that if the injured person had never been born, the injury would not have happened. So the courts ask another question: Was the wrongful act the proximate cause?

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Before the jury can find the defendant liable in this case, they must find that the act of the defendant in allowing the plaintiff to come on the tracks and in shutting him in there while the train was coming was an act of negligence. If they find that this was negligence they must further find that the situation produced by this negligence was such as to frighten a normal person, and to frighten him to such a degree as so to rob him of memory and judgment that if he had been in the plaintiff's situation, he (the normal person) would have likely forgotten the condition in which he left the spark and gasoline levers on his automobile, and would have had no better sense than to attempt to crank the machine without first examining the levers. If they find that the plaintiff experienced such a fright from the negligence of the defendant, and that the fright was natural and normal under the circumstances, and that the impulse and effect of this fright caused him to forget that his machine had been left in a dangerous condition, and caused him to omit such acts of prudence as an ordinarily prudent man would have performed before attempting to crank it, in order to move it off the track, and that while in this state of mind, thus temporarily rendered abnormal, he forgot the condition of the levers and attempted to crank the machine, unconscious of the danger, and was injured, such causal connection between the negligence and the damages is established as to authorize the jury to find the defendant liable. On the other hand, if the jury should find that the defendant's acts were not negligent, or that, if negligent, they were not such as to produce such a sense-robbing degree of fright in a normal person as to cause him to forget the condition of his machine or to neglect to take usual and ordinary precaution before attempting to crank it, or that the defendant's forgetfulness of the dangerous condition of his machine, or his neglect to examine into its condition before attempting to crank it, was the result of his own carelessness more largely than of any fright which he had normally experienced, the jury should find for the defendant. Thus the question is one for the jury; and the court properly declined to solve it on demurrer.

Judgment affirmed.