Court Opinion

ID: 9679219
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:44:41.85232+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:11.495472
License: Public Domain

Upon Petition foe Rehearing
On February 19, 1971, the following opinion was filed:
Per Curiam.
The legal issue as stated in defendants’ brief was confined to the applicability of the Brainerd ordinance submitted to the jury by special interrogatory. Defendants concluded discussion of that issue with the statement that, if the construction of the ordinance as applicable to defendants’ building “makes sense, then the verdict is correct; if not, defendants are entitled to judgment.” The foregoing opinion fully determined that issue.
Defendants, in their petition for rehearing, state that we overlooked an issue of proximate cause. Defendants did challenge the following interrogatory:
“Was such violation [of the ordinance] a direct or proximate *27cause of the explosion or fire which occurred on December 28, 1964, and the resulting harm to plaintiffs?”
They contended that the phrase “explosion or fire” posed a meaningless double question. No objection, however, was interposed when the interrogatory was submitted to the jury.
Defendants contended then, and do now, that there was, in any event, no evidence that their negligence caused all of the stipulated damages to plaintiffs. In denying defendants’ motions to change the special verdicts and to order judgment in their favor, the trial court observed that no attempt had been made, at any stage of the trial, to separate the existence of fire from explosion and that no material difference between the two had been demonstrated. Although the fire originated from unknown causes in a limited area at the west end of the building, the evidence, direct and circumstantial, adequately supports the inference that the rapid spread of the fire easterly and the ultimate explosion at the east end of the building were caused by defendants’ negligence in constructing the building with the wood duct work, resulting in plaintiffs’ losses. An inference that these losses may have occurred by spread of the fire despite defendants’ negligence, although of course arguable, does not preponderate over the contrary special finding of the jury, approved by the experienced trial court.
Petition for rehearing denied.