Court Opinion

ID: 9590230
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:52:53.077805+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:12:17.831032
License: Public Domain

CORN, Justice
(dissenting).
The parties stipulated the fire was set by defendant’s train, spread to plaintiff’s land and caused the damage alleged; attempting to arrest spreading of the fire plaintiff took his tractor and when nearly dark plowed a fire guard along his property; completing this task plaintiff started to drive his tractor to a place of safety and then return to assist in fighting the fire. As respects receiving the injury plaintiff testified:
“Q. Tell the court what happened at the time you were * * * just what happened * * * the way you were struck. A. Let me put it this way. I went over on the tractor and plowed a fire guard around the inside of the meadow and just completed it and turned around and started to put my tractor in a safe place to go and help them. I run over something, I don’t know what, and it flew up and hit me in the eye.”
The trial court reserved ruling upon defendant’s demurrer to this cause of action, made upon the ground that defendant’s negligence was not the proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries. Defendant stood upon the demurrer and the matter was submitted for consideration upon the written briefs. The court overruled the demurrer, and made findings of fact.
Based upon these findings the court concluded that the statute, 2 O.S.1951 § 748, places liability upon a railroad for all damages originating from operation thereof ; when it set the fire originally defendant was bound to anticipate plaintiff’s efforts to arrest the spread thereof; that he might use the method relied upon and that there was likelihood of his receiving injury therefrom; defendant was bound to know such natural events might result from its negligence, and so could not escape liability *354upon the ground subsequent, independent events broke the chain of causation from, the original wrongful act. The judgment appealed from was rendered upon the basis of such conclusions.
The trial court recognized, as does the majority opinion, that the rule of proximate cause has not heretofore been applied in this jurisdiction to a situation such as is here presented. The majority opinion directs attention to the divergent views of other courts which have considered the question, and adopts, as the rule in this state, the majority view that the injuries received resulted solely from the fire, rather than from the discharge of a duty imposed by the fire. No useful purpose is to be served by analysis of numerous decisions dealing with this problem. It is sufficient to state that in a proper case the rule announced by the majority opinion could be accepted with complete propriety.
However, I am unable to agree with the majority view based as it is upon the theory that equitably plaintiff should not be required to bear the loss resulting from his injury. No equitable considerations are involved. The only issue is whether defendant’s negligence can reasonably and logically be determined to be the proximate cause of plaintiff’s injury.
The- propriety of the rule announced as an abstract principle is not to be questioned. But, it is my view that this decision wholly fails to recognize well founded and long established principles of law with reference to liability for negligence.
In 38 Am.Jur., Negligence, Sec. 56, the rule for determining proximate cause is stated as follows:
“ * * * To constitute proximate cause there must be such a natural, direct, and continuous sequence between the negligent act and the injury that it can reasonably be said that but for the act the injury would not have occurred. The question is was there an unbroken connection between the wrongful act and the injury, a continuous operation? Did the facts constitute a succession of events so linked together as to make a natural whole, or was there some new and independent cause intervening between the wrong and the injury? Whether negligence was the proximate cause of an injury is determined according to natural and probable consequences rather than by the number of subsequent events which might occur. * * * ”
See Mead v. Chickasha Gas & Electric Co., 137 Okl. 74, 278 P. 286; Magnolia Petroleum Co. v. Barnes, Adm’r, 198 Okl. 406, 179 P.2d 132. And section 57 of the same text states:
“The rule which has been stated and applied more often than any other test of proximate cause is that which determines an injury to be the proximate result of negligence only where the injury is the natural and probable consequence of the wrongful act or omission. It is not enough to prove that the accident is the natural consequence of the negligence. It must also have been the probable consequence. * * * ”
Nor does the majority opinion recognize that the intercession of a new or efficient cause which produces an injury prevents the original negligence from being denominated the proximate cause. 38 Am. Jur., Negligence, Sec. 68, states the rule:
“ * * * An act which only furnishes the opportunity for the infliction of an injury is not the proximate cause of the injury, where the latter occurs as the direct result of some intervening force. Thus, where a negligent act creates a condition which is subsequently acted upon by another unforeseeable, independent and distinct agency to produce the injury, the original act is the remote and not the proximate cause of the injury, even though the injury would not occur except for the act. * * * ”
Measured in the light of the foregoing rules this situation appears as follows. In order to protect his property, plaintiff sought to arrest spreading of a fire set by defendant’s negligence. The means by which he sought to accomplish this were reasonable and practical. Completing the *355job at hand he turned away from the vicinity, ostensibly for the purpose of placing his tractor in a place of safety. While so engaged he drove the tractor over “something”, which flew up and struck him.
The sole question is whether, as a matter of law, plaintiff’s injury can be said to have been the direct or proximate result of defendant’s negligence, or whether such negligence was too remote to be considered as the proximate cause thereof. Defendant reasonably could anticipate that its negligence would endanger plaintiff’s property, and that he would exercise all necessary and reasonable methods and means to extinguish or control the fire and save his property. On this basis the possibility of injury occurring as a direct result of his being so engaged can be considered as a foreseeable and’easily anticipated result of the original negligence.
However, it cannot be said with equal logic that one guilty of negligence is required to anticipate that injury may occur from some unknown and unidentified force not actively concerned with or identified as being a part of the result of defendant’s negligence. The field of possibilities as to what might have happened to plaintiff is far wider than the reasonable probabilities defendant reasonably could be expected to foresee. (Negligence may be, and often is, established solely by circumstantial evidence. But, no rule permits the circumstances relied upon to be established by speculation. Lawson v. Anderson & Kerr Drilling Co., 184 Okl. 107, 84 P.2d 1104.
To sustain plaintiff’s theory, and the judgment based thereon, requires this court to unduly entend the doctrine of proximate cause to the point of saying that any injury, which occurs in a chain of events originally set in motion by defendant’s negligence is to be considered as the natural and probable consequence thereof. This, in turn, requires any defendant to anticipate the reasonable probability thereof without consideration of intervening agencies and whether they bear some causal connection therewith. By extending the doctrine to such lengths to meet individual situations, solely in an effort to alleviate the loss resulting from the injury received, most assuredly has significant and far-reaching results. The ’most obvious of these being that the rule of proximate cause is so extended that one chargeable with negligence is a positive insurer of the safety and well being of one who acts in response to the original negligence from the time the danger is apparent until he returns to the shelter of his own roof. In my judgment the doctrine should not be so extended.
For this reason I respectfully dissent.