Court Opinion

ID: 9833034
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 22:23:02.24211+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:58.102164
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
In this motion it is insisted that we erred in holding that defendant could not be held liable for any damages sustained by plaintiff by reason of the mock trial he was subjected to by the prisoners with whom he was incarcerated. ,
We do not understand that plaintiff’s counsel question the soundness of the principle that only such damages are recoverable in a case of this character as flow from the false imprisonment as its natural and probable sequence in a continuous, unbroken sequence, but that the insistence is that the indignities he received from ‘being kangarooed by the other prisoners naturally flowed from his wrongful imprisonment.
In deference to the ability and evident sincerity of counsel in urging this contention we have read and considered, as best we could, their argument and all the authorities cited in support of their proposition, though we have not been induced thereby to change our views expressed in our original opinion on the subject. Consequences which follow in unbroken sequence, without an intervening, sufficient cause, from the original wrong, áre natural, and for which the wrongdoer is responsible, even though he could not have foreseen the particular results, provided by the exercise of ordinary care or circumspection he might have foreseen some injury would result from his act. “A natural and probable consequence” flows from a “natural *242and probable” or proximate cause. Natural consequences are always proximate. As is said in Milwaukee & St. P. Ry. Co. v. Kellogg, 94 U. S. 474, 24 L. Ed. 256: “Tbe primary cause may be tbe proximate cause of a disaster, tbougb it may operate through successive instruments, as an article at tbe end of a chain may be moved by a force applied at the other end, that force being the proximate cause of the movement, or, as in the oft-cited case of the squib in the’ market place. The question always is, Was there an unbroken connection between the wrongful act and the injury — a continuous operation? Did the facts constitute a continuous succession of events so linked together as to make a natural whoie, or was there some new and independent intervening cause between the wrong and injury?” All the cases cited by appellee (S. A. & A. P. Ry. Co. v. Griffin, 20 Tex. Civ. App. 91, 48 S. W. 542; Drumm v. Cessnum, 61 Kan. 473, 59 Pac. 1078; Stoecker v. Nathanson, 5 Neb. (Unof.) 435, 98 N. W. 1061, 70 L. R. A. 667; A. T. & S. F. Ry. Co. v. Rice, 36 Kan. 593, 14 Pac. 229; Gonzales v. Galveston, 84 Tex. 3, 19 S. W. 284, 31 Am. St. Rep. 17), to which we have had access, fully meet the test laid down in the above quotation, and an affirmative answer can truly be given the questions therein propounded, for the purpose of determining the proximate cause of an event.
But when the test is applied to this case, the mind balks in its endeavor to extend the chain of causation from defendant’s act of wrongful imprisonment to the mock trial; for it finds the chain of causation too short. The connecting link is missing. And, like Darwin’s “missing link” in the evolution of man, it can’t be found. The chain has ended, and another and distinct causation, which cannot be connected with the original wrong of the defendant, has commenced, working an injury to the plaintiff which the defendant could not anticipate as a consequence of its wrong, and for which it is not, and cannot be held, responsible.
The case of Indianapolis Traction, etc., Co. v. Springer (Ind. App.) 93 N. E. 707, to which our attention was called by defendant’s counsel after the motion was submitted, has no application to the question under consideration. It simply announces the well-established rule of law, as well as physics, that, where several agencies are required to produce a result, or if they contribute thereto as concurrent forces, the presence and existence of one will not relieve the other, because it would still be the efficient cause of the result. But here there was no concurrence in the act of defendant with the act of the prisoners which injured the plaintiff. The injury done him by the defendant was different from that done by the prisoners. In other words, the injuries done him by the one were separate and distinct from those inflicted by the other, each arising from separate, disconnected causes, neither of which conspired or contributed to produce the injury done by the other.
The motion is overruled.