5 M. & G. 613. damages for the loss of particular customers. (See Rose v. 4 M. & S. 101. Groves, and Rose v. Miles.) Rule as to abating nuisance. L. R. 2 Ex: 316. 16 Q. B. 276. 7 Q. B. 339. Remoteness of damage. The question remains whether the expense of removing an obstruction or nuisance can be recovered as damages as for a peculiar injury. In Winterbottom v. Lord Derby it was held that they could not be recovered. They certainly cannot be where the obstruction might have been passed with reasonable convenience: Dimes v. Petley. This general rule was acted on in The Mayor of Colchester v. Brooke. The facts were these. An oyster-bed in a navigable river reduced the waterway the defendant's ship grounded and destroyed the bed. The action was brought by the obstructor. It was said that "each individual who is only injured as one of the public cannot abate the nuisance any more than he can sue: that with regard to a private nuisance, the individual may abate so as he commits no riot in doing it:" and that a public nuisance becoming a private one in respect of special injury, might be abated by the individual specially injured. In the case there was no special injury, and therefore, as the defendant was not entitled to abate the nuisance wilfully, it was held that he was bound to use care and skill in navigating the river; and the jury having negatived this, judgment was given for the plaintiff. § 6. REMOTENESS OF DAMAGE. The subject of remoteness of damage is a most complicated one; and to examine it fully by the light of the multitude of instances to be found in the Reports, would necessitate the devotion to it of a long chapter. The general subject we are dealing with does not seem to require this extended enquiry, but only one sufficient to extract the leading principles and most striking examples. The question is, is the damage suffered the direct consequence of the defendant's act, or is it a remote consequence; the consequence of consequence? maxim. "It were infinite," says Lord Bacon in his Maxims of the Bacon's must be dis covered. This maxim embodies the rule of law and the reason of Causa proxima the rule, which insists on the necessity for ascertaining the causa proxima of the wrong complained of, and prohibits the recovery of damages from any cause more remote. It is important at the outset to point out the distinction which, however slight it may be, exists between the application of this rule of causa proxima in cases of contract and tort. on contract, 9 Ex: 341. With regard to the former, the whole law seems to be Rule in actions summed up in the well-known case of Hadley v. Baxendale: "The injury for which compensation is asked should be one. that may be fairly taken to have been contemplated by the parties as the possible result of the breach of contract." One example of the application of this rule must be given to elucidate it. Tickets were taken from A. to B.: the train did not stop at B. but went on to C.: in consequence damages were claimed in respect of (i.) inconvenience from having to walk from C. to B.; and (ii.) expense for doctors from exposure to wet, the night having been rainy: Hobbs V. L. R. 10 Q. B. London & South Western Ry. Co. The Court allowed the first claim, but disallowed the second. Cockburn, C.J., after laying down the rule as given above, said that the damage must therefore be something immediately flowing out of the breach; something immediately connected with it, and not merely connected with it through a series of causes intervening between the immediate consequence of the breach of contract and the damage or injury complained of. He then put two hypothetical cases. Suppose a passenger put out at a wrong station on a wet night, and being obliged to walk in the rain, he catches cold, is laid up with fever, and loses an employment; or whilst walking home he falls and breaks his leg. The conclusion was that in either case the is not strictly applicable to torts. 253. Rule in torts. walk (or, rather, the getting) home alone being in the contemplation of the parties, in respect of that alone could damages be recovered. With regard to torts the principle must of necessity be somewhat different, because there can only be one party whose contemplation can be material. The rule was laid down L. R. 7 C. P. as follows by Bovill, C.J., in Sharp v. Powell: A tortfeasor is responsible for the ordinary consequences which are likely to result from his act; but, generally speaking he is not liable for damage which is not the natural or ordinary consequence of such an act, unless it be shewn that he knows, or has reasonable means of knowing, that consequences not usually resulting from the act are, by reason of some existing cause, likely to intervene so as to occasion damage to a third person. The defendant had committed a breach of the Police Act (21 & 22 Vict. c. 47, s. 54), by washing a van in the public street the waste water ran towards a grating twenty-five yards away the grating was choked up with ice: the water ran into the street and froze: the plaintiff's horse slipped and broke his leg. The Court held that the defendant could not reasonably expect the frozen accumulation at the grating (although there had been a fortnight's frost), and was therefore not liable. 2 W. Bl: 892. Facts of the squib case. We must next consider the famous squib case (Scott v. Shepherd), in which the plaintiff was held liable (Blackstone, J., dissenting) for the consequences of his act under the following circumstances. "On the evening of the fair-day at Milborne Port, 28th October, 1770, the defendant (Shepherd) threw a lighted squib made of gunpowder, &c., from the street into the market-house: which lighted squib, so thrown by the defendant, fell upon the standing of one Yates: one Willis instantly, and to prevent injury to himself and the said wares of the said Yates, took up the said lighted squib from off the said standing, and then threw it across the said market-place, where it fell upon another standing there of one Ryal, who instantly, and to save his own goods from being injured, took up the squib and threw it to another part of the market-house, and in so throwing it struck the plaintiff then in the said market-house in the face therewith, and the combustible matter then bursting, put out one of the plaintiff's eyes." Shepherd's act was held to be the proximate cause of the plaintiff's injury. 263. Sneesby v. Lancashire and Yorkshire Ry. Co. is another L. R. 9 Q. B. example of the defendant being held liable for damage resulting after a long chain of circumstances. Beasts were being driven along an occupation road to the fields: they were crossing the level siding of the railway: some trucks were sent down the line negligently which frightened the cattle: the drovers recovered some of them, but the others went along the road, got into a garden through a defect in the fences, and so on to the line, where they were run over by a train and killed. Mr. Justice Blackburn in holding the Company liable said that so long as the want of control over the cattle remained without any fault of the owner, the causa proximu was that which caused the escape, for the consequences of which he who caused it was responsible. If control over the cattle was lost and could not be recovered until they had run into danger and were killed, the death was the natural consequence of the negligence. springs directly from the preceding one. We have in these two cases an extended chain of circum- In these cases stances every link of which springs of itself out of the pre- the chain every link of ceding one without the intervention of any new agency: each act generates the succeeding one, and so long as this freely generating process continues, the liability of the impelling agent continues. It is to be noticed that in the squib case it was not Yates, the owner of the standing, but Willis, a bystander, who picked up the explosive and threw it on: but the judges expressly rest their judgment on the automatic In the squib nature of the several acts. De Grey, C.J., said: "It has been were autourged that the intervention of a free agent will make a differ- matic. ence; but I do not consider Willis and Ryal as free agents in the present case, but acting under a compulsive necessity case the acts [ante, p. 164.] Distinction between the frost and the squib cases: but if original able man he should have foreseen the results. for their own safety and self-preservation." The automatic nature of the successive acts being accepted as a test, the principle to be deduced cannot be better expressed than it was by Nares, J., in the maxim Qui facit per aliud facit per se. It is important to see further whether, first, this maxim requires any and what limitation; secondly, if it is capable of any and what extension. First, as to the necessary limitations. A very similar chain of circumstances existed in Sharp v. Powell, just considered. But the distinction between the cases seems to be that a new causa causans arose, starting a fresh set of circumstances as to which it became itself the proximate cause: this new cause was the freezing and obstruction of the grating. It is therefore necessary to limit the proposition in the following way: directly the natural course of events is altered, impeded, accelerated, or in any other way affected by any other impelling agency, that agency becomes the causa proxima, and the natural consequences of the original impelling agency are held to cease. He But this must again however be limited, in the language of Chief Justice Bovill, unless he who in point of fact sets in motion the whole train of circumstances, "knows or has reasonable means of knowing that by reason of this new cause the course of natural consequences is likely to be altered." if as a reason- Two things are therefore necessary to make him liable. must know of the existence of the new cause; and in his capacity as a reasonable man he must foresee the natural or probable result of this new cause acting on the circumstances he has himself set in motion. Another very good instance of L. R. 8 Q. B. this is furnished by Lawrence v. Jenkins. The plaintiff had a prescriptive right to have certain fences kept in repair: they were out of repair, his cows got through into an adjoining field, then they fed on the leaves of a yew tree and were Example from poisoned. The defendant was held liable. Here the yew tree was as clearly the causa proxima as the frozen grating in the former case but it was not difficult to presume a knowledge 274. broken fence and yew tree. |
