Opinion ID: 1443160
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: intervening winds preclude liability

Text: Assuming, however, that the jury found that DNR had a duty as a landowner and breached this duty, it does not follow that the plaintiffs can prevail. This is because the uncontroverted evidence in this case leads to but one conclusion: the proximate cause of plaintiffs' losses was the intervening sudden violence of 30-mile-per-hour winds (act of God), without which they would not have occurred. This was a superseding cause which, by its intervention, prevents the State from being liable. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 440 (1965). Two older Washington cases have held that a strong wind, which arises while a fire is in progress and carries it from the land where it is burning to where it would not otherwise have spread, is an intervening cause relieving the party responsible for the original setting of the fire from liability. Stephens v. Mutual Lumber Co., 103 Wash. 1, 173 P. 1031 (1918); Lehman v. Maryott & Spencer Logging Co., 108 Wash. 319, 184 P. 323 (1919). In Stephens, it was alleged that the appellant negligently permitted the fire to escape from his lands. Appellant was engaged in logging operations when sparks flew off his engine and ignited a fire. When the fire started, there was a light wind from the north blowing the fire away from the camp. Suddenly, the wind changed from the north to the south. The fire began to spread rapidly and jumped 1,000 feet over the previously burned area. Soon thereafter, the logging camp was destroyed. The court held there can be no liability in the absence of any evidence of negligence in allowing the fire to spread from the immediate vicinity of the engine, especially where there would have been no loss if the wind had not suddenly changed and jumped the fire to plaintiff's property. The court explained: the law ... will [not] charge one with negligence who fails to put out a fire which is not threatening, when such fire, by reason of some new cause, lodges on the property of another or goes beyond the control of the person who set it out. Stephens, at 7. Similarly, in Lehman v. Maryott & Spencer Logging Co., 108 Wash. 319, 184 P. 323 (1919), there was a gale of wind blowing. The court held: A strong wind which arises while a fire is in progress and carries it where it would not otherwise have spread is an intervening cause which will relieve the party responsible for the original fire from liability for loss. Lehman, at 323-24. The Montana Supreme Court very recently found the State not liable for combating forest fires which resulted in damage to plaintiffs' properties because of intervening winds. In Jacobsen v. State, 236 Mont. 91, 769 P.2d 694 (1989), homeowners brought an action against the State alleging negligence in combating forest fires. The court held that intervening forces of nature  sudden strong winds  were the cause of the fire that resulted in plaintiffs' losses. The Barker Mountain fire started sometime Wednesday. By Wednesday afternoon, DNR crews arrived to combat the fire. By Wednesday night, the fire had calmed down. On Thursday morning, the fire was still inside the fire lines that had been constructed the night before, and the fire continued to burn close to the ground. On Thursday afternoon, crews were working on the fire when the wind suddenly increased to 30 m.p.h. It was when the winds dramatically picked up to 30 miles per hour that the fire started to break out of the fire lines. Soon thereafter, the fire began spreading and jumping ahead of the main body of the fire. By 3 p.m., the fire exploded. Plaintiffs' properties were damaged sometime after the fire exploded on Thursday afternoon. Before the winds flared up on Thursday afternoon, DNR had the fire contained within the fire lines it had constructed the previous day. The crews were diligently working on a controlled fire when the intervening winds caused the fire to jump beyond the fire lines. Only after the winds fueled the fire into an explosion did the plaintiffs' properties suffer damage. As in the above cited cases, there can be no liability for failure to put out a fire which is not threatening, when such fire because of sudden intervening winds jumps to plaintiffs' properties. This intervening act of God was the proximate cause of plaintiffs' damages, and DNR was not guilty of negligence nor the proximate cause of plaintiffs' damages.