{ "id": 11255121, "name": "EMMA GARLAND v. CAROLINA, CLINCHFIELD AND OHIO RAILWAY COMPANY", "name_abbreviation": "Garland v. Carolina, Clinchfield & Ohio Railway Co.", "decision_date": "1916-12-06", "docket_number": "", "first_page": "638", "last_page": "641", "citations": [ { "type": "official", "cite": "172 N.C. 638" } ], "court": { "name_abbreviation": "N.C.", "id": 9292, "name": "Supreme Court of North Carolina" }, "jurisdiction": { "id": 5, "name_long": "North Carolina", "name": "N.C." }, "cites_to": [ { "cite": "166 N. C., 482", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "N.C.", "opinion_index": 0 }, { "cite": "159 N. W., 577", "category": "reporters:state_regional", "reporter": "N.W.", "opinion_index": 0 }, { "cite": "54 Mich., 55", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Mich.", "case_ids": [ 1434915 ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/mich/54/0055-01" ] }, { "cite": "113 Fed., 72", "category": "reporters:federal", "reporter": "F.", "case_ids": [ 3710255 ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/f/113/0072-01" ] }, { "cite": "137 N. C., 278", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "N.C.", "case_ids": [ 8656146 ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/nc/137/0278-01" ] }, { "cite": "131 N. C., 392", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "N.C.", "opinion_index": 0 }, { "cite": "138 N. C., 42", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "N.C.", "case_ids": [ 11268664 ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/nc/138/0042-01" ] } ], "analysis": { "cardinality": 582, "char_count": 10415, "ocr_confidence": 0.452, "pagerank": { "raw": 1.46568691638861e-07, "percentile": 0.6582190699148869 }, "sha256": "e4b3636819c387fb3b734da3e19bdc61a3724e3e3946a60047d929d18c6d12bf", "simhash": "1:1cc2b844ae931087", "word_count": 1824 }, "last_updated": "2023-07-14T19:21:58.562423+00:00", "provenance": { "date_added": "2019-08-29", "source": "Harvard", "batch": "2018" }, "casebody": { "judges": [], "parties": [ "EMMA GARLAND v. CAROLINA, CLINCHFIELD AND OHIO RAILWAY COMPANY." ], "opinions": [ { "text": "BeowN, J.\nThe plaintiff testified that in September, 1915, she purchased a ticket from Erwin to Forbs, a flag station on defendant\u2019s railway. The conductor took up her ticket, and slowed down at Eorbs, but did not stop the train, in consequence of which plaintiff was carried to Toecane, 2% miles from Eorbs. She alighted from the train and walked to Eorbs and crossed the river there and started home carrying a heavy suitcase. Her husband was to have met her at. Forbs, but as the train did not stop, she failed to meet him. Plaintiff started home by a near path to her home, 2 miles from Forbs. She carried the suitcase as far as \"Wesley Deaton\u2019s and left it. She stopped there a while and then walked on to her home.\nShe further testifies: \u201cIt was right pleasant when I got off at Toe-cane, but there came up a storm in the evening before I reached home.\u201d She had then left Deaton\u2019s and was about 1% miles from her home. It did not rain at all until after she left Deaton\u2019s. Plaintiff testifies that her body was wet and that she suffered materially because of it. William Garland, the husband, testified that he was working at Wesley Deaton\u2019s, that he went to Forbs to meet his wife, but as the train did not stop, he returned to Wesley Deaton\u2019s to his work; that later in the day plaintiff came bringing the suitcase; that she went on home, leaving the suitcase for him to bring home that evening.\nThe plaintiff requested the court to charge the jury that \u201cthe plaintiff is entitled to recover for the personal injury, inconvenience, annoyance, discomfort, and the physical effort incident to and flowing from defendant\u2019s failure to put her off at her destination, and for the injury she suffered, if any you find she suffered, by getting wet and carrying her suitcase.\u201d\nThe court instructed the jury fully, but stated that plaintiff was not entitled to any damage for getting wet, and that they should not award plaintiff any damage on that account. To this charge the plaintiff excepted.\nThis assignment of error is substantially the only question presented on this appeal.\nIn actions founded on tort the wrong-doer is liable for all injuries resulting directly from the tort, whether they were in the contemplation of the parties or not. The rule laid, down in Hadley v. Baxendale, that the damage must be within the contemplation, of the parties, applies only to breaches of contract. But in torts the damages must be the legal and natural consequences of the wrongful act and such as according to common experience and the usual course of events might have been reasonably anticipated. The legal proximate cause of all damage must be the toft.\nIf the cause is remote in efficiency and does not naturally result from the tort, it will not be considered as proximate. To be such it must be \u201ca cause that produced the result in continuous sequence and without which it would not have occurred, and one from which any man of ordinary prudence could have foreseen that such a result was probable under all the facts as they existed.\u201d Ramsbottom v. R. R., 138 N. C., 42; Brewster v. Elizabeth City, 131 N. C., 392.\nLord Bacon says: \u201cIt were infinite for tbe law to judge tbe causes of causes and tbeir impulsion one on another. Therefore, it contentetb itself with tbe immediate cause and judgetb of acts by that without looking to any further degree.\u201d Maxims Reg. 1. No rule of damage embraces within its scope all the resulting consequences of a given act. Such a rule would be a serious hindrance to the ordinary affairs of iife. The effect would be to impose a liability entirely disproportionate to the act committed, or to the failure to perform the duty assumed, as well as to the compensation received therefor. There must be a limit, and the courts have set it at a point \u201cwhere for the purpose of the law a particular cause may be said substantially to have spent its force and to have fallen into the great mass of circumstances which has ceased to be an active force.\u201d 1 Sutherland on Damage, 111 b. Therefore, common carriers are held responsible only for the ordinary and proximate consequences of their negligence and not for those that are remote and extraordinary. Causa pr\u00f3xima, non remota, spectatur. \u201cCompensation is recoverable for consequential losses only when they are proximate. Consequences are natural and probable only when, according to common experience and the usual course of events, the effect- of the wrongful conduct is to set in operation the intermediate cause; that is to say, when the intermediate cause was not independent.\u201d Hale on Torts, p. 213.\nFollowing these well settled principles, this Court held that though a carrier negligently delayed to forward goods delivered at its depot for shipment, it was not liable for the loss of the goods by fire when it was not negligent in respect to the fire. Extinguisher Co. v. R. R., 137 N. C., 278. Likewise it is said that in case of delay by a carrier in the delivery of goods whereby they are destroyed by flood, when the connection between the delay and the flood is merely accidental and fortuitous the loss of the goods is a remote consequence of the delay. 1 Sutherland on Damages, sec. 119.\nIt is held in the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals that where by reason of delay in constructing a vessel it was crossing the sea at a later time than was intended, and was caught in a hurricane and destroyed, the loss of the vessel was a remote and unexpected consequence of the delay in construction. D. E. Ford v. Steel Co., 113 Fed., 72.\nA passenger was carried a short distance past his station on a dark night, and on leaving the train was misinformed by the conductor as to where he was. He soon discovered that he was south of a cross road he meant to take in going home, instead of north of it, as he was told when he landed. In nearing a cattle-guard en route home his eyes deceived him, his foot slipped, and in trying to recover his balance he fell into the culvert, which he supiDosed was farther off, and was seriously injured. Held, that the carrier\u2019s negligence in carrying plaintiff past the station, and in misinforming him, was not the proximate cause of the injury, which was purely accidental, and he could not recover for it. Lewis v. Ry. Co., 54 Mich., 55.\nIt was held by the Wisconsin Court that where a railway company carried a woman passenger beyond her destination, and she voluntarily and needlessly walked back instead of waiting for a returning train, the road was not liable for injuries sustained by her from exposure on her walk back, the damages not being the proximate result of the road\u2019s breach of duty. Le Beau v. Minneapolis, St. P., and S. S. M. Ry. Co., 159 N. W., 577.\n.In Elliott v. R. R., 166 N. C., 482, the plaintiff was carried beyond her station and compelled to alight at another station on a cold, snowy night, and remain at the depot for some time. There was no station-house, as it had been burned down. In consequence of being carried beyond her own station and put off in the cold, sleet, and snow at a station without proper accommodation, and compelled to wait there some time, plaintiff was made ill and suffered serious injury. It was held that her injury was the proximate result of the carrier\u2019s negligence. The distinction between that case and this is too obvious to need discussion.\nThe sudden storm that caused plaintiff to get wet was an independent, intervening, and unexpected cause and the act of God, for which defendant was in no way responsible. If she had not stopped at Deaton\u2019s, or if she had remained there longer, she might have escaped entirely. The negligence of the defendant did not set that independent cause in motion. It was one of those accidents against which human foresight cannot provide, and was not the proximate result of the carrier\u2019s negligence.\nAs said by Chief Justice Cooley (Lewis v. Ry., supra,), \u201cIt was after the plaintiff had been brought there that the cause of the injury unexpectedly arose. If lightning had chanced to strike the plaintiff at that place, the fault of the defendant and its relation to the injury would have been the same as now, and the injury could have been charged to the defendant with precisely the same reason as now.\u201d\nWe are of opinion that thS court properly excluded from the consideration of the jury the injuries sustained solely as the result of the thunderstorm. As there is no dispute as to the facts, and as only one deduction is possible to he drawn from them, proximate cause thus became a question of law.\nNo error.", "type": "majority", "author": "BeowN, J." } ], "attorneys": [ "Hudgins, Watson & Watson for plaintiff.", "J. J. McLaughlin-, Pless & Winborne for defendant.-" ], "corrections": "", "head_matter": "EMMA GARLAND v. CAROLINA, CLINCHFIELD AND OHIO RAILWAY COMPANY.\n(Filed 6 December, 1916.)\n1. Torts \u2014 Damages\u2014Proximate Cause.\nA wrong-doer is responsible in damages resulting directly and proximately from tbe tort be bas committed; but if tbe cause is remote in efficiency and does not naturally result from tbe tort, it will not be considered as proximate.\n2. Same \u2014 Carriers of Passengers \u2014 Negligence\u2014Intervening Cause \u2014 Trials\u2014 Courts \u2014 Questions of Law.\nWhere a railroad company bas negligently carried a female passenger a mile or two beyond ber station, causing ber to walk that distance to her home with a suitcase, and tbe failure of ber husband to meet ber; and it appears that, at tbe time, tbe weather was clear and pleasant, but she was caught in a storm before she reached home, after having stopped a while on ber way at a friend\u2019s: Held, tbe damages she may have sustained by reason of tbe storm were caused by an independent, intervening act, tbe act of God, and not those arising proximately from tbe carrier\u2019s tort, and are properly excluded as an element of damages as a matter of law.\n3. Torts \u2014 Carriers\u2014Damages\u2014Contracts\u2014Proximate Cause.\nWhere a carrier is sued for damages in tort for a neglect of its duty in negligently carrying a passenger to a station beyond ber destination, tbe rule that tbe damages must have been within tbe contemplation of tbe parties, applying to breaches of contract, bas no application.\nCivil actioN tried at August Term, 1916, of Yaitoey, before Shaw, J., upon these issues:\n1. Did the defendant wrongfully carry tbe plaintiff by Eorbs station, as alleged? Answer: \u201cYes.\u201d\n2. \"What damage, if any, is the plaintiff entitled to recover of the defendant? Answer: \u201c$87.50.\u201d\nFrom the judgment rendered, the plaintiff appealed.\nHudgins, Watson & Watson for plaintiff.\nJ. J. McLaughlin-, Pless & Winborne for defendant.-" }, "file_name": "0638-01", "first_page_order": 704, "last_page_order": 707 }