Court Opinion

ID: 9640224
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:01:25.760948+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:28.435881
License: Public Domain

DENMAN, Circuit Judge.
I dissent. On the facts as found in the majority opinion the decision is opposed to every decision of the Supreme Court from the flood case of Memphis & C. Railroad Co. v. Reeves, 10 Wall. 176, 190, 19 L.Ed. 909, and of all the Circuits, which holds that one cannot be held liable. for damage of which he is not the proximate cause.
The majority opinion finds that before any act of negligence of defendant, the flood had raged over plaintiff’s lands for at least 12 hours to a depth of 4 or 5 feet. It finds “The soil was silty loam, which, the testimony shows, ‘is the finest matter that floats, you might call it, the top in running stream; it is light.’ ”, It finds that only after the land had been out of sight under the flood waters for these 12 hours, did the power company release water from its dam raising the 4 or 5 feet but a few inches. It finds that when the land emerged from the waters all its value had been destroyed.
It might well ,be said, res ipsaf loquitur, the flood without any negligence of the power company had carried away 'a large, but not measurable, portion of the plaintiff’s arable land. However, the majority opinion finds as a fact that the damage arising after the defendant tortiously released the added inches to the raging feet is impossible of determination.
“Since it is true that the evidence shows some damage by the act of God prior to the time when appellant’s negligent act concurred, was appellant liable therefor, and if not, did appellee have a duty to prove the amount of damage done by such part of the act of God? Assuming, without deciding, that appellant would not be liable for the damage caused by the act of God, and which was sustained prior to the concurrence of appellant’s negligence, we believe no objection to the proof in this case can be taken. It is true that the proof does not show to a mathematical or scientific certainty the amount of damage done by the act of God prior to the time when appellant’s negligence concurred. It does disclose that erosion occurred prior to that time. Where such erosion occurred, the land was covered with water to some depth. It would be impossible to abruptly stop that water, measure the damage done, and then start the flood again. The law does not require the impossible.” (Italics supplied.) (Majority opinion.)
Upon this candid statement of what the record truly shows, is created a new rule of liability. It is no longer required of a plaintiff that he prove what damage to his property the defendant’s tort has proximately caused. All he now has to do, in this Circuit, is to prove that it is impossible to prove such proximately caused damage. It is a new theory of the law that the impossibility of maintaining plaintiff’s burden of proof shifts the burden to the defendant to show how much or how little his tort has damaged plaintiff.
The fact that the case comes to us from a denial of a motion for a nonsuit and without the court’s instructions does not aid the appellee landowner. On the findings of fact made by this court, no instruction that the defendant “was not liable for erosion occurring prior to defendant’s negligence,” as suggested in the majority opinion, would cure the impossibility of determining what invisibly inflicted damage had been caused by defendant’s negligence— the few inches addition to the flood after the 12 hours of the sweep of the torrent over the light silty soil.
It is but logical, in view of the above findings and decision that this court hereafter must decide that a tort-feasor is liable for damage occurring, here from the flood, prior to his tort. He will be so liable wherever the plaintiff shows the impossibility of a segregation of the damage prior to the concurrency of the tort and the natural forces in proximate 'causation of the later (and here invisibly inflicted) damage.
However, let us suppose that the damage was from another natural element— from fire instead of water, visible instead *819of invisible, in its damaging progress. Suppose a lire caused by lightning burns 500 acres of plain!iff’s ripe grain; suppose on the same day a neighbor tortiously starts a brush fire which burns- towards the lightning fire and joins the lightning fire after the 500 segregable acres have burned. The brush fire and the lightning fire continue together through the plaintiff’s grain and burn 100 acres more.
Is the tortious neighbor liable for 100 acres or for 600 acres ? It is obvious that he is liable only for the 100 acres. The cases are not distinguishable because the act of nature in one works through water and in the other through fire.
A careful search fails to disclose any case holding that a tort-feasor is liable for damage not inflicted by him because a force disconnected from the tort which caused such prior damage, merges with the tort, and both inflict further damage. In none of the flood cases and others cited in the majority opinion is there any finding of unsegregable damage prior to the tortfeasor’s participancy in the cause of the prior damage and jointly caused further damage. The judgment should have been reversed.