Court Opinion

ID: 9336310
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-12-15 21:50:25.846935+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:15:12.335589
License: Public Domain

RANBORN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting). I am unable to resist the conclusion that there is no evidence in this case of any negligence on the part of the receiver. The test of absence of ordinary care here is: Would a man of usual prudence and sagacity have anticipated, and have taken steps to guard against, the fall of this rock, under all the circumstances of this case? The rock which slid upon the track was half as large as a car. It wras so embedded in the side of the mountain that it was visible only to the extent of 18 inches. No ordinary inspection or test by the use of hammer or bar could determine that it would ever fall. The railroad had been constructed eight years before this accident occurred, and no cutting or grading or change in the face *750of the mountain about the rock had been made during all this time. No flood, storm, or other disturbance of the earth or of the elements occurred shortly before its fall, which might have caused it. A state of things once proved to exist is presumed to continue. When the face of a mountain is changed by grading, cutting, or filling, a duty of watchfulness and care is imposed during the first few months thereafter in order to guard against the natural effects of such acts. But the longer a'rock or a mountain side remains in the same position and condition, the less becomes the need, and lienee the duty, of watchfulness, until finally the probability that they will not move or change in the absence of some warning, and of some active and apparent cause, becomes conclusive. This rock had remained embedded in the mountain side unmoved through the storms and changing seasons of eight years after the railroad was built and the grading done about it, and I have been forced to the same conclusion as the trial judge that a man of ordinary prudence would not have anticipated that it would fall without apparent cause or warning, and would not have taken any steps to fasten it in its position, or to inspect it more carefully than the receiver did. An injury that could not have been foreseen or reasonably anticipated as the probable result of an act or omission lays no foundation for an action (Railway Co. v. Elliott, 12 U. S. App. 381, 386, 5 C. C. A. 347, 350, and 55 Fed. 949, 952), and it seems to me that there was no human probability that this rock would slide from its mountain bed after it had remained in the same sii nation for eight years, and that no man could have anticipated its fall as the natural or probable result of a failure to inspect or secure it