Court Opinion

ID: 9655825
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 19:23:06.97333+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:22.223011
License: Public Domain

Simmons, C. J.,
dissenting.
I dissent.
I see no reason to discuss the question of the sufficiency of the warnings placed by defendants so far as daylight is concerned, for this accident, to plaintiff happened at night.
The court apparently concedes that the liability of the defendants as to sufficiency of warnings would normally be a jury question, but holds as a matter of law that that liability was severed, because of notice to members of *385the township board and their agreement to put up adequate warnings and take care of the matter and the lapse of a reasonable time in which to do that before the accident happened; and that the failure of the township officials to do anything was an intervening independent act of negligence which, ipso facto, relieved defendants of liability.
Although I do not deem it as a law matter of controlling materiality here, yet we should keep our facts straight. The court says that the township officers advised the defendants “they would take care of it” and “agreed to put up something proper.” The court’s recital of facts shows that one township official, acting without concurrence of the others, and by defendants’ testimony, speaking in the first person, singular, so advised the defendants, and that notice of the condition of the bridge was gotten to the other members before the accident.
I do not question the duty of the township officials to do something about the bridge — but the question here is the duty and liability of the defendants in the matter.
The court quotes from Simonsen v. Thorin, 120 Neb. 684, 234 N. W. 628, 81 A. L. R. 1000, and stops with that case. We there held:
“When one engaged in the proper use of a highway causes an obstruction to be placed upon it in such a manner as to be dangerous to traffic, he must use ordinary care to prevent injury to others where he knows that such obstruction is calculated to do an injury to travelers upon said highway.
“The negligence in such a case is, after having placed an obstruction in the highway, to leave it in such a manner as will be dangerous to others using the highway.
“Whoever places an obstruction in a public highway, even by an involuntary act and without negligence, is under obligation to remove such a nuisance from the highway or is required to use ordinary care to warn the *386traffic on said highway of the dangers incident to said obstruction.”
We there held that the creation of the obstruction was the creation of a nuisance and that the negligence consisted in having placed an obstruction upon the street and leaving it in such a manner as to be dangerous to others using the street. In Swinford v. Finck, 139 Neb. 886, 299 N. W. 227, we held that failure in a reasonable time to remove the obstruction, or failure to reasonably warn of the dangerous condition of the highway would be actionable negligence.
We followed Simonsen v. Thorin, supra, in Grantham v. Watson Bros. Transportation Co., on rehearing, 142 Neb. 367, 9 N. W. 2d 357, quoted with approval the rule first quoted above, and held that the defendant owed the duty of ordinary care to prevent injury.
In Kuska v. Nichols Construction Co., 154 Neb. 580, 48 N. W. 2d 682, we held: “A failure to so warn the traveling public is continuing negligence as distinguished from a condition, and if reasonable minds could conclude from the evidence that such negligence proximately caused an accident, then the issue should be submitted to a jury for its determination.”
The court here recognizes that the rule is, as stated in Simonsen v. Thorin, supra, that this is a continuing duty. Obviously the continuing duty arises because the obstruction is continuing, and as we held in Kuska v. Nichols Construction Co., supra, “is continuing negligence as distinguished from a condition.” The court now by three quotes from decisions dealing with “conditions” clouds the meaning of what heretofore has been a clearly stated rule.
We have then here a case. where clearly under our holdings the negligence of the defendants was continuing, up to and including the time of the accident to plaintiff.
There is no attempt here to charge the defendants with the failure of the township officials to do their duty, *387as the court infers. There is an attempt here to charge the defendants with the failure to do their own duty in the premises.
But the court holds that the fact that defendants gave notice to the members of the township board, had a promise by one of them to take care of it, and because the board had a reasonable time to do it, as a matter of law that constitutes all' that any reasonably prudent man was required to do.
Obviously it is the lapse of time, in this instance 4 days including a Saturday and Sunday, which the court concludes is the controlling element which relieves the defendants of liability as a matter of law, and that in any event the failure of the township board to do anything in that 4 days was as a matter of law the proximate cause of this accident.
The court cites and quotes from Haynes v. Norfolk Bridge & Construction Co., 126 Neb. 281, 253 N. W. 344. In that case a contractor had performed his work of installing culverts and it had been accepted by the state. Thereafter plaintiff’s car at night ran into the end of culverts not covered by dirt. Plaintiff’s theory was that the defendant’s work had not been accepted by the state and that the defendant had a duty to erect barriers or warnings. The case turned upon the question of acceptance. We held that the work had been accepted and that the contractor had no further duty to maintain warnings. We there specifically held: “There is no evidence in the record that there were any defects in the work performed by the Norfolk Company, or that it failed in any respect to comply with the plans and specifications of the contract.” In short, we held that there was no negligence chargeable to the defendant which required it to continue to maintain warnings. That case is not this case.
Restatement of the Law states the applicable rule as ' follows:
“Failure of a third person to perform a duty owjng *388to another to protect him from harm threatened by the actor’s negligent conduct is not a superseding cause of the other’s harm.
“The fact that the third person has failed to perform his duty to protect the other from harm threatened by the actor’s negligence, implies that, had the duty been performed, it would have prevented the actor’s negligence from causing the harm which results from it. In order that there can be a failure of a duty of protection the person owing it must have either the opportunity to perform it or at least he should have had such an opportunity had he been reasonably attentive to his surroundings. The third person’s failure to perform his duty in this respect makes him concurrently liable with the negligent actor for any harm which results from the actor’s negligence and which would have been prevented by the performance of the third person’s, duty.” Restatement of the Law, Torts, § 452, p. 1206. The following illustration of the rule is given: “2. A, the owner of a house abutting on a city street, employs B to dig a trench across the highway to make connection with a sewer. B does the work of replacing the sidewalk so negligently as to make the sidewalk dangerous for travel. A, though knowing of this, takes no steps to put the sidewalk in safe condition. Several weeks after B has left the job as completed, C, without negligence, is hurt by the bad condition of the pavement. A’s failure to have the sidewalk repaired makes him liable to C but is not a superseding cause relieving B from liability to A.”
38 Am. Jur., Negligence, § 67, p. 722, states the rule as follows: “The test of the sufficiency of an intervening cause to defeat recovery for negligence is not to be found in the mere fact of its existence, but rather, in its nature and the manner in which it affects the continuity of operation of the primary cause, or the connection between it and the injury. * * * In order to be effective as a cause ‘ superseding prior negligence, the *389new, independent, intervening cause must be one not produced by the wrongful act or omission, but independent of it, and adequate to bring about the injurious result; a cause which interrupts the natural sequence of events, turns aside their course, prevents the natural and probable result of the original act or omission, and produces a different result, that reasonably might not have been anticipated. * * * The test is whether the intervening efficient cause was a new and independent force, acting in and of itself in causing the injury and superseding the original wrong complained of, so as to make it remote in the chain of causation, * * *.”
In 65 C. J. S., Negligence, § 111, p. 693, the following rule is stated: “An intervening cause, in order to break the causal connection between the original negligence and the injury, must come into operation in producing .the result after the negligence of the original .actor; and, if the original negligence continues to the time of the injury, an intervening act will not relieve the original actor of liability.”
1 Shearman & Redfield on Negligence (Rev. ed.), §§37 and 38, p. 101, states the rule as follows:
“If the force which causes the injury is put in operation or motion by what is the negligence of the defendant, and that force or motion is still in progress or operation and has not lost its identity and continuity as such when the injury occurs, then the negligence which puts the injurious force in operation is the proximate cause.
“In order to relieve the defendant of responsibility for the event, the intervening cause must be a superseding cause. It is a superseding cause if it so entirely supersedes the operation of the defendant’s negligence that it alone, without his negligence contributing thereto in the slightest degree, produces the injury.”
From the many cases cited in the texts I refer to three because of the factual situations involved.
Shewell v. Borough of Narbeth, 54 Montgomery Coun*390ty Law Reporter 375, is a decision of an intermediate court. I cite it because of the law cited and reasoning in it. In this case the owners of a truck broke off a wooden standard, allowing a stump to remain in a sidewalk. Two months and 17 days thereafter plaintiff fell over the stump and was injured. The question was as to the liability of the owners of the truck. The court held: “The mere passage of time will not relieve the wrongdoer from liability, * * *. It was the duty of the borough to keep the highway, including the sidewalk and the plot between the curb and sidewalk, in reasonably safe condition for use by the traveling public. If the stump of the standard constituted a dangerous hazard to the users of the highway, and the borough had actual or constructive notice of the existence of the nuisance, the borough would be guilty of negligence.
“Assuming as we must for our present purpose, that the stump created a dangerous condition in the highway, and that the borough had notice of the same; was the negligence of the borough in permitting the condition to remain, the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injury?” The court quoted Restatement of the Law, Torts, § 452, p. 1206, and then held: “* * * the negligence of Nepi Brothers in creating the dangerous condition in the highway, was the active negligence, and the negligence of the borough in permitting it to remain, the passive negligence.”
In Diehl v. Fidelity-Philadelphia Trust Co., 159 Pa. Super. 513, 49 A. 2d 190, steam coming from a building owned by one defendant formed ice on the sidewalk in front of a building of a second defendant. The owner of the second building had notice of the ice and failed to remove it. The court held that the failure of the owner of the second building was a “clear breach of the duty” but that its failure to perform its duty was not a superseding cause of harm resulting from the negligence of the owner of the first building, that the negligence of the owner of the first building “was not *391insulated” by the intervening negligence of the owner of the second building, and that both defendants were jointly and severally liable. The court quoted Restatement of the Law, Torts, § 452, and cited Restatement of the Law, Torts, §§ 440 and 447.
In Holmes v. T. M. Strider & Co., 186 Miss. 380, 189 So. 518, 123 A. L. R. 1190, the defendant had been hired to do work on a bridge. In doing it defendant removed certain hand or guardrails and posts. He was then in April 1937 ordered to replace the handrails, guards, and posts, open the bridge to traffic, and to discontinue work. He replaced the guardrails and posts in a negligent manner. In August the highway department did work on the bridge but did not alter the condition of the guardrails. Still later the plaintiff, a guest in an automobile, was injured because of the negligent work of defendant. The court, holding the defendant liable, followed the rule that: “* * * ‘where an act of negligence is a substantial factor in bringing about an injury, it does not cease to be a legal and proximate cause thereof because of the intervention of a subsequent act of negligence of another which contributed to the injury, if the prior act of negligence is still operating, and the injury inflicted is not different in kind from that which would have resulted from the prior act.’ ”
On these authorities I would hold the duty of the defendants being a continuing one, as the court holds, that the question of whether or not defendants exercised due care to reasonably warn of the dangerous condition of the highway, which they created, was, at least, a jury question. On that feature of the case I would affirm.