McCully v. Clarke & Thaw

The opinion of the court was delivered, by Strong, J. No complaint is made of the instruction given to the jury in this case. None could be, with any shadow of reason. The charge was a clear, accurate, and comprehensive statement of the principles of law applicable to the facts of which evidence had been given. It is not alleged that it contained anything erroneous. The complaint here is, that the learned judge did not say more ; that he did not take the facts away from the jury, and instruct as matter of law that the plaintiff was entitled to recover. The action was brought for negligence. The point of the accusation was, that the defendants had so negligently kept and continued a certain pile of coal which had taken fire, and so wrongfully and negligently failed to extinguish the fire, that the warehouse of the plaintiff, with its contents, had been ignited and destroyed. Whether the defendants had been guilty of the negligence charged, was therefore the principal subject of inquiry; in other words, whether they had exercised such care and diligence to prevent injury.to the property of the plaintiff, as a prudent and reasonable man, under the circumstances, would exercise. Now, it is plain that what is such a measure of gare is a question peculiarly for a jury. A higher degree isMoubtless demanded under some circumstances than under others. It varies with the danger. And when the standard shifts with the circumstances of the case, it is in its very nature incapable of being determined as a matter of law, and must be submitted to the jury. There are, it is true, some cases in which a court can determine that omissions constitute negligence. They are those in which the precise measure of duty is determinate, the same under all circumstances. When the duty is defined, a failure to perform it is of course negligence, and may be so declared by the court. But where the measure of duty is not unvarying, where a higher degree of care is demanded under some circumstances than under others, where .both the duty and the extent of performance are to be ascertained as facts, a jury alone can determine what is negligence, and whether it has been proved. Such was this case. The question was not alone what the defendants had done, or left undone, but, in addition, what a prudent [407] and reasonable man would ordinarily have' done under the circumstances. Neither of these questions could the court solve. When, therefore, the court was ashed to instruct the jury that if they believed certain facts were proved, of which evidence had been given, the defendants were guilty of negligence, and the plaintiff was entitled to recover, the instruction was properly refused. It could not have been given without determining, as matter of law, what care and caution a prudent and reasonable man would have exercised in circumstances similar to those in which the defendants were placed. The points proposed to the court assumed that the defendants were under obligation completely to extinguish the fire in the coal-pile within a designated time. They did not propose to submit to the jury even so much as whether it could have been done, much less whether every reasonable effort had not been made to extinguish it. Nor were the facts which the court was called upon to declare conclusive proof of negligence, and entitling the plaintiff to recover, all the material facts of which there was evidence in the case. There were others of a qualifying nature, important to the inquiry, whether the defendants had been culpably negligent. Without considering these other facts, the court must have taken but a one-sided view of the case. Besides all this, the court could not have directed a verdict for the plaintiff, as requested, without deciding that there was no evidence at all of concurring negligence on the part of the plaintiff. But even if the loss of the plaintiff was occasioned by want of due caution on the part of the defendants, the case was not destitute of evidence that ^ the plaintiff’s negligence contributed to the loss. For similar reasons, the court was right in declining to charge the jury that certain facts enumerated, even though not constituting negligence in law, threw upon'the defendants the burden of proof in the case, and that the jury must be satisfied that the fire could not have been extinguished within a designated time, or the plaintiff would be entitled to a verdict. The instruction asked for assumed that it was for the court to determine precisely what was due diligence and caution, and to rule that nothing less than the complete extinguishment of the fire in the specified time, if' possible, would bring their conduct up to the standard by which prudent and reasonable men are guided. This point also, as did the others, ignored pertinent and important facts in .evidence, 'which must have been considered in determining whether there was negligence at all, and, if affirmed, it might have given the plaintiff a verdict, even though the plaintiff’s own negligence may have concurred in causing his loss. In actions for negligence the burden of proof is upon the plaintiff. The law will not presume it for him. And in cases like this, where all the evidence must be considered in order to ascertain whether [408] negligence existed, it is a mistake to suppose that a court may be required to single out some of the facts proved and declare that they remove the burden of proof from the shoulders of the plaintiff, and cast it on the defendant. That can only be done where a court can determine what constitutes guilt. It is the province of the jury to balance the probabilities and determine where the preponderance lies. The case relied upon by the plaintiff in error, Piggott v. The Eastern Counties Railway Company, 8 M. Gr. & S. 229, 54 Eng. C. L. Rep. 228, is in perfect harmony with these doctrines. In that case the defendants ran a locomotive, the sparks from which set fire to the property of the plaintiff. Using a dangerous agent, the law required of them to adopt such precautions as might reasonably jjrevent damage to the property of others. Some precaution was a duty. They had no right to run their locomotive without it. Failure to adopt some precaution was therefore failure to discharge a defined duty, and was negligence. In such a case the court might well say, as was said, that a fire caused by running the engine, without any evidence of precaution, established a primd facie case of negligence. Even this, however, was not laid down as matter of law to the jury. It was only said by one of the judges, in commenting on the evidence, and in reply to a rule for a new trial, on the ground that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence. It was therefore no more than an assertion that the jury might have drawn the inference of negligence from the' facts that a locomotive had kindled a fire, and that there had been no precaution. That was a very different case from the present. Even if the court might in that case have declared the effect of the evidence, it must have been because the duty of the defendants was unvarying and well defined by the law. Here the standard of duty was to be found as a fact, as well as the measure of its performance, and there was evidence of earnest, continued, and apparently successful efforts to extinguish the fire in the coal. This disposes of all the assigned errors, except the fifth and eighth. Of them we need only say that they were not insisted on in the argument, and we have not been able to discover that they point to any error committed. Judgment affirmed.