Opinion ID: 1165336
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Statutory policies.

Text: As already mentioned, a court need not determine whether an activity otherwise within the rule is exceptionally dangerous when legislators or their administrative delegates have recognized the danger by subjecting the activity to stringent safety regulations. Defendant and amici curiae make the opposite claim that statutory policy governing field burning precludes liability without fault for injuries caused by the burning. Field burning legislation is found in ORS 468.450-468.495. ORS chapter 468 as a whole is concerned with pollution control. It assigns certain responsibilities for air pollution control to state and local administrative agencies, including the regulation and licensing of open field burning of grass and cereal grain crops. ORS 468.455 contains a legislative declaration that limitation or bar of the practice at this time, without having found reasonable and economically feasible alternatives to the practice could seriously impair the public welfare. The section, however, indisputably refers to field burning as a source of pollution. It declares the public policy to control the inevitable pollution by smoke management and research, consistent with ORS 468.280. That section, in turn, states the general public policy to maintain air quality as free from air pollution as is practicable, consistent with the overall public welfare of the state. These policy declarations have nothing to do with fire danger. They permit a polluting activity to continue, as far as state law is concerned, but they contain nothing to relieve it of the costs of harm to others. They do not preclude strict liability for injuries caused by field burning when this otherwise would apply. Nor does the field burner's possession of the required permit preclude strict liability. Licenses, certificates, or permits are common devices in the regulation of dangerous activities, including the handling and use of explosives, dangerous gas, or chemical spraying involved in our prior cases of strict liability. See ORS 478.920(4) and 480.200 to 480.280 (explosives); ORS 480.432 to 480.436 (liquid petroleum gas); ORS 634.106 to 634.146 and 634.306 (pesticide operators and applicators). About the same argument, the court stated in McLane: We do not believe the fact that the state has authorized defendant to engage in the abnormally dangerous activity in question demonstrates any intention to predetermine where responsibility should lie in the case of a non-negligent miscarriage of the activity. 255 Or. at 336, 467 P.2d 635. [17] The court continued with the observation that compliance with safety regulations would not foreclose liability without fault, even if the regulations fixed the standard of due care for liability based on negligence. Here, as in McLane, defendant's activity was legal and conducted with governmental approval, but that approval does not predetermine civil responsibility in case of a non-negligent miscarriage of the activity. Plaintiff, in turn, points to the extensive regulations that address the incendiary rather than the polluting propensities of fire to establish its hazardous character. We agree that these are the more pertinent laws to show how far lawmakers have treated open, outdoor fires as a source of exceptional risk. ORS chapters 476, 477, and 478 make extensive provisions for organizing and paying for the prevention, suppression, and investigation of fires. These are evidence of the importance that historically has been given to the communal defense against the dangers of fire generally, not of a determination that some uses of fire are exceptionally dangerous. Some statutes impose special obligations with respect to particular kinds or locations of fire. ORS chapter 477, for instance, is devoted to fire protection on forest, grazing, and rangeland and contains provisions for regulation, e.g. ORS 477.515, 477.575, 477.625, and liability for double damages for fire losses caused negligently, wilfully, or maliciously, ORS 477.090. The statutory regime for forest, grazing, and rangeland is not involved in this case, and there is no occasion here to examine its implications for tort liability. Three statutes not limited to such lands may, however, be relevant. Plaintiff cites ORS 477.740, which imposes criminal liability for unlawfully setting on fire any grass, grain, stubble or other material being grown on any lands within the state or failing to control the spread of fire from one's own land. The suggestion is not that the present defendant violated this statute but that the statute shows legislative recognition of the special danger of fires on open land. Two statutes, ORS 478.960, and ORS 476.380, place open burning, including field burning, within and outside rural fire protection districts under special controls. Subsection (1) of each statute forbids such burning without first securing permission respectively from the fire chief or from county officials and complying with the directions of the fire chief. ORS 478.960(2) directs the district fire chief to prescribe conditions upon which permission is granted and which are necessary to be observed in setting the fire and preventing it from spreading and endangering life or property or endangering the air resources of this state. The subsection also makes it the responsibility of the fire chief, deputy, or State Fire Marshal to deny permission for field burning, even when allowed by the Environmental Quality Commission, if the fire official thinks it necessary to prevent danger to life or property from fire. Subsection (3) holds the person starting the fire responsible for providing adequate protection to prevent injury to the person or property of another, and it prescribes that any escape of the fire or injury to the person or property of another constitutes prima facie evidence that the burning was not safe. ORS 476.380 makes similar provisions for property not within a rural fire protection district. The statute does not explain the relevance of this prima facie evidence that the burning was not safe. One of the amici curiae suggests that it implies that a person starting the fire is liable only if the burning was not safe, and that this negates strict liability. A clause about civil liability, however, more likely would have used a familiar word such as negligent, referring to the conduct of the burner, than safe, which refers to the burning. This fire obviously proved unsafe, though not for lack of care. A standard that burning be safe is equally compatible with either theory of liability. It appears that the clause was enacted with a view, not to civil liability, but to sanctions for violations of the section. It originally provided that the escape of fire and injury to the property of another ... shall be prima facie evidence that the burning was not safe and was in violation of this section. ORS 478.960(2) (1955). This provision implies nothing about the standard for tort liability to the injured party in the absence of a violation. Moreover, in the later version governing open burning outside fire protection districts, ORS 476.380, the same provision is followed by the explicit statement that nothing in the section (c) Relieves a person who has obtained permission to start a fire, or his agent, from legal liability for property damage resulting from the fire. In adopting these statutes the legislature did not undertake to define or alter tort liability for property damage, any more than in adopting the regulations of cropdusting and chemical herbicides cited in Loe v. Lenhardt and Bella v. Aurora Air, Inc . As in those cases, what the statutes establish is legislative recognition that certain kinds of open fires pose an exceptional danger of spreading and causing injuries. Governments, of course, require precautions against many routine risks that fall short of the extraordinary or abnormally dangerous. If safety regulations and licensing or other permit requirements alone implied a finding of exceptional danger, strict liability would be the rule and negligence liability the exception in wide areas of contemporary life. Not all fires, though regulated in the interests of safety, are abnormally dangerous; moreover, even hazardous activities do not carry strict liability for resulting harm if they are common usage. Whether a regulatory scheme reflects recognition of extraordinary danger must be judged for each particular scheme. We have described the exceptional controls imposed upon open field burning, with their requirement of individual permits in the light of daily conditions and of on-the-scene precautions to deal with a spread of the fire if it occurs. These statutory provisions reinforce the conclusion of the Court of Appeals that field burning fits this court's criteria of an abnormally dangerous activity. The spread of the fire from defendant's field to plaintiffs' land therefore was a trespass making defendant liable for the damage done to their property. The decision of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.