Court Opinion

ID: 9418249
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:16:49.05071+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:59.088359
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Holmes
partially concurring.
The first two questions concern a standard of conduct and therefore that which in its nature and in theory is a question of law. In this, I gather, we all agree, although the proposition often is forgotten or denied. But while the standard is external to the judgment of the party concerned and must be known and conformed to by him at his peril, The Germanic, 196 U. S. 589, 596, courts-, by a practice that seems at first sight an abdication of their function where it is most needed but that I dare say is justified by good sense, in nice cases leave the standard to the jury as well as the facts. In the questions before us, however, the elements supposed are few and frequently recurring, so that but-for what I have to say I should be very content to find that we were able to lay down the proper rule without a jury’s aid. Furthermore, with regard to what that rule should be, I agree, for the purposes of argument, that as a general proposition people are entitled to assume that their neighbors will conform to the law; that a negligent tort is unlawful in as full a sense as a malicious one, and therefore that they are entitled to assume that their neighbors will not be negligent.
Nevertheless I am not prepared to answer the first question, No, if it is to be answered at all. We are bound to consider that at a trial the case would be presented with more facts — that this case wa,s presented with at least one more fact bearing upon the right to recover — I mean the distance. If a man stacked his flax so near to. a railroad *353that it obviously was likely to be set fire to by a well-managed train, I should say that he could not throw the loss upon the road by the oscillating result of an inquiry by the jury whether the road had used due care. I should say that although of course he had a right to put his flax where he liked upon his own land, the liability of the railroad for a fire was .absolutely conditioned upon the stacks being at a reasonably safe distance from the train. I take it that probably many, certainly some,' rules of law based on less than universal considerations are made absolute and universal in order to limit those over refined speculations that we all deprecate, especially where such rules are based upon or affect the continuous physical relations of material things. The right that is given to inflict various inconveniences upon neighboring lands by building or digging, is given, I presume, because of the public interest in making improvement free, yet it generally is made absolute by the common law. It is not thought, worth while to let the right to build or maintain a barn depend upon the speculations of a jury as to motives. A defect in the highway, declared a defect in the interest of the least competent travellers that can travel unattended ' without taking legal risks, or in the interest of the average man, I suppose to be a defect as to all. And as in this case the distinction between the inevitable and the negligent escape of sparks is one of the most refined in the world, I think that I must be right so far, as to the law in the case • supposed.
If I am right so far, a very important element in determining the right to recover is whether the plaintiff’s flax was so near to the track as_to be in danger from even a prudently managed engine. Here certainly, except in a clear case, we should call in the jury. I do not suppose that any one would call it prudent to stack flax within five feet of the engines or imprudent to do it at a distance of half a mile, and it wopld not be absurd if the law ulti*354mately should formulate an exact measure, as it has tended to in other instances; (Martin v. District of Columbia, 205 U. S. 135, 139;) but at present I take it that if the question I suggest be material we should let the jury decide whether seventy feet was too near by the criterion that I have proposed. Therefore, while the majority answer the first question, No, on the ground that the railroad is liable upon the facts stated as matter of law, I should answer it Yes, with the proviso that it was to be answered No, in case the jury found that the flax although near, was not near enough to the trains to endanger it if the engines were prudently managed, or else I should decline to answer the question because it fails to state the distance of the stacks.
I do not think we need trouble ourselves with the thought that my view depends upon differences of degree. The whole law does so as soon as' it is civilized. See Nash v. United States, 229 U. S. 373, 376, 377. Negligence is all degree — that of the defendant here degree of the nicest sort; and between the variations according to distance that I suppose to exist and the simple universality of the rules in the Twelve Tables or the Leges Barbarorum, there lies the culture of two thousand years.
I am authorized to say that The Chief Justice concurs in the opinion that I express.