Court Opinion

ID: 9655373
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 19:08:37.365025+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:18.019862
License: Public Domain

On Hearing En Banc
PER CURIAM.
Burkart now contends that our Divisional opinion overlooked the Kansas law on the effect of intervening cause of failure to inspect which it claims makes its alleged negligence a remote and not a proximate cause. However, in none of the carrier cases cited did it appear that the original carrier, by its affirmative acts, had altered an existing condition to make it more dangerous by creating a concealed dangerous condition, as it is claimed Burkart did in this case; and apparently the negligence charged against both carriers in the cited cases was failure to discover a defect by inspection. Ruiz v. Midland Valley R. Co., 158 Kan. 524, 148 P.2d 734, 152 A.L.R. 1307; Rodgers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 75 Kan. 222, 88 P. 885, 10 L.R.A.,N.S., 658; Missouri, K. & T. Ry. Co. v. Merrill, 65 Kan. 436, 70 P. 358, 59 L.R.A. 711; see also Illustration 1 under Sec. 393, Restatement of Torts. Burkart cites other Kansas cases, not involving carriers, which it says are controlling here, namely: McCallion v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 74 Kan. 785, 88 P. 50, 9 L.R.A.,N.S., 866; Smith v. Mead Construction Co., 129 Kan. 229, 282 P. 708; Cruzan v. Grace, 165 Kan. 638, 198 P.2d 154; Wright v. Kansas City Structural Steel Co., 236 Mo.App. 872, 157 S.W.2d 582, applying Kansas law and approved in Folsom v. Lowden, 157 Kan. 328, 139 P.2d 822, 825. All of these cases (except the Smith case) involved negligence in furnishing unsafe things, which negligence was held to be a remote cause and not a proximate cause because of an efficient intervening cause. In the McCallion case, furnishing a car with a broken chain (which both the carrier and plaintiff’s employer failed to discover or repair) was held to be a remote cause and the negligence of the plaintiff’s employer (who required him to work in the defective car), in failing to furnish him a safe place to work, was held the proximate cause. In the Cruzan case, furnishing an unbroken horse to hitch to a plow was held to be a remote cause and negligence of a fellow servant, in leaving a double-tree unfastened to the tongue, so that it fell and struck the horse, was held the proximate cause. However, the court pointed out it was no allegation that a broken horse would not run away under the same circumstances. In the Wright case, furnishing a defective scaffold board, in an old scaffold not built for the use of plaintiff’s employer, was held to be the remote cause, and negligence of the plaintiff’s employer in ordering him to use the old scaffold was held to be the proximate cause. In the Smith case, the failure of a contractor on road construction work to maintain lights and barricades was held to be a remote cause of damage to the plaintiff’s automobile but the jury found the driver was negligent and his negligence was held the proximate cause.
*871However, there is another line of cases in Kansas which we think are more in point in this case and authorize holding that the negligence of Burkart in creating the concealed dangerous condition herein involved was a concurring proximate cause and not a remote cause. In Crow v. Colson, 123 Kan. 702, 256 P. 971, 973, 53 A.L.R. 457, the negligence of a hotel owner in improperly attaching a window screen, which fell and struck plaintiff’s husband (causing his death) when the screen was struck by a guest, was held a concurring proximate cause; and reversed the action of the trial court in sustaining the defendant’s demurrer “upon the ground that the injury was brought about by an intervening cause.” In Clark v. E. I. Du Pont de Nemours Powder Co., 94 Kan. 268, 146 P. 320, 322, L.R.A. 1915E, 479, defendant after shooting a well with solidified glycerine left some of it near the well. A workman, unskilled in its use, took it home and placed it in a crevice in a stone fence of an abandoned cemetery on his father’s farm. Two years later, three boys found it and hit it on a rock to break off a piece to take home, causing it to explode and injure them. The court affirmed a judgment against defendant saying the crux of the matter was that “no new power of doing mischief was communicated to the solidified glycerine by the acts of” the workman; and his action in placing it where he did “does not amount to an unrelated and efficient agency to shift the proximate cause from the delict of the powder company to a new proximate cause of his own making;” but that the issue of defendant’s negligence as proximate cause was for the jury. We may say here that “no new power of doing mischief” was communicated to the concealed dangerous condition of the car herein (created by the affirmative negligent acts of Burkart) by the failure of later handlers of the car to discover by inspection the dangerous condition created by Burkart. The Crow case and the Clark case were cited with approval in Noel v. Menninger Foundation, 175 Kan. 751, 267 P.2d 934, 937, where it is said: “The rule that the causal connection between an actor’s negligence and an injury is broken by the intervention of a new, independent and efficient intervening cause, so that the actor is without liability, is subject to the qualification that if the intervening cause was foreseen or might reasonably have been foreseen by the first actor, his negligence may be considered the proximate cause, notwithstanding the intervening cause.” In the Noel case, the negligence of the hospital in permitting a mental patient to cross a road, where he was struck by a truck, was held a concurring proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injury. This principle was thereafter applied in Emmerich v. Kansas City Public Service Co., 177 Kan. 443, 280 P.2d 615, 622, in which store owners left a chain (being used to haul mud out of their basement) across streetcar tracks. A streetcar negligently operated at excessive speed struck and broke the chain, a loose end striking and breaking the window where plaintiff was sitting, injuring her. Judgment against both defendants was affirmed, the court holding the questions of negligence and proximate cause were for the jury, saying as to the store owners’ liability : “Where a defendant knows or has reasonable means of knowing that consequences not usually resulting from the act are likely to intervene so as to occasion damage, he is liable although it be not an ordinary and natural consequence of the negligence.” See also Rowell v. City of Wichita, 162 Kan. 294, 176 P.2d 590.
The above-cited cases and other similar Kansas cases were reviewed in the recent case of Steele v. Rapp, 183 Kan. 371, 327 P.2d 1053, 1065. There the defendant sold to a beauty shop inflammable fingernail polish remover, negligently failing to put it in a safe container or give warning by label or otherwise of its dangerous quality. An operator in the shop of the buyer dropped the jug causing an explosion that injured plaintiff. The court held that the negligent dropping of the jug was not as a matter of law an intervening cause which prevented the negligence of the defendant from being a proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injuries, saying: “Upon the admitted facts alleged the *872■negligence of the defendant was operative at the moment of plaintiff’s injury and acted contemporaneously with the negligent act of Loretta Jamison, an employee of the beauty shop, and was an efficient cause in the sense that had the plaintiff and Lpretta Jamison been advised of the highly inflammable and explosive character of the fingernail polish remover, proper precautionary measures could have been taken to safely handle the product; or had the defendant delivered the fingernail polish remover in a safe container the explosion would never have occurred. Under these circumstances the consequence of the negligent acts of the defendant in creating the dangerous condition was natural and probable, or likely to occur, according to reasonable experience of mankind. The intervening cause might reasonably have been anticipated by a prudent person in defendant’s position.” Likewise we hold here that the claimed intervening cause, failure to discover by inspection, might reasonably have been anticipated by Burkart because it had so effectively concealed the hole as to make its discovery by ordinary inspection most difficult and unlikely; or at least the jury reasonably could so find. Furthermore, we think it reasonably might be found that injury to anyone unloading the car would be a natural and probable consequence of covering the hole with paper (so as to create “a dangerous hidden condition which was in effect a concealed trap”) and that such a result of its acts might reasonably have been foreseen. Therefore, our conclusion is that, under the law of Kansas, the jury reasonably could find the claimed negligent acts of Burkart constituted a concurring proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries.
Burkart reargues failure of proof as to identity of the car involved, and objects to our following our ruling in Markley v. Kansas City Southern R. Co., 338 Mo. 436, 90 S.W.2d 409, to remand the case. We reaffirm the rulings made in our opinion on this and other matters raised and the result therein reached.