this class, though the problem arose and was considered, in form, upon the question whether there was any evidence of negligence. The plaintiff was a passenger in a carriage already over-full. As the train was stopping at a station, he stood up to resist yet other persons who had opened the door and tried to press in. While he was thus standing, and the door was open, the train moved on. He laid his hand on the door-lintel for support, and at the same moment a porter came up, turned off the intruders, and quickly shut the door in the usual manner. The plaintiff's thumb was caught by the door and crushed. After much difference of opinion in the courts below, mainly due to a too literal following of certain previous authorities, the House of Lords unanimously held that, assuming the failure to prevent overcrowding to be negligence on the company's part, the hurt suffered by the plaintiff was not nearly or certainly enough connected with it to give him a cause of action. It was an accident which might no less have happened if the carriage had not been overcrowded at all.

Non-liability for consequences of unusual state of things: Blyth v. Birmingham Water-works Co. Unusual conditions brought about by severe frost have more than

Non-liability for consequences of unusual state of things. In the case of Hoag v. Lake Shore, etc., R. Co. (85 Pa. St. 293; 27 Am. Rep. 653), the facts were, that owing to a sudden rain, an embankment was detached and slid down upon the track. An oil train of defendant's coming along a few minutes after the slide was thrown from the track by this detached earth upon the track, the oil cars thrown off and the oil spilled and set on fire, and thus running down into a creek below swollen by the rain, was carried by the current several hundred feet to the buildings of plaintiff which were thereby set on fire and consumed. The court decided as a matter of law th t the cause was too remote from its consequence and refused to submit the question to the jury.

It has been held that a city is not liable for the injury resulting to a person from the breaking, in a violent wind, of a sound and properly secured liberty pole. Allegheny v. Zimmerman, 95 Pa. St. 287.

Where a bridge having become impassable, one who desired to carry wood across piled it on the levee to await opportunity, and a flood car

once been the occasion of accidents on which untenable claims for compensation have been founded, the Courts holding that the mishap was not such as the party charged with causing it by his negligence could reasonably be expected to provide against. In the memorable Crimean winter" of 1854-5 a fire-plug attached to one of the mains. of the Birmingham Waterworks Company was deranged by the frost, the expansion of superficial ice forcing out the plug, as it afterwards seemed, and the water from the main being dammed by incrusted ice and snow above. The escaping water found its way through the ground into the cellar of a private house, and the occupier sought to recover from the company for the damage. The Court held that the accident was manifestly an extraordinary one, and beyond any such foresight as could be reasonably required (k). Here nothing was alleged as constituting a wrong on the company's part beyond the mere fact that they did not take extraordinary precautions.

Sharp v. Powell. The later case of Sharp v. Powell (1) goes farther, as the story begins with an act on the defendant's part which was a clear breach of the law. He caused his van to be washed in to be washed in a public street, contrary to the Metropolitan Police Act. The

(k) Blyth v. Birmingham Waterworks Co. (1856), 11 Ex. 781, 25 L. J. Ex. 212. The question was not really of remoteness of damage, but whether there was any evidence of negligence at all; nevertheless the case is instructive for com.

parison with the others here cited. Cp. Mayne on Damages, Preface to the first edition.

(1) L. R. 7 C. P. 253, 41 L. J. C. P. 95 (1872).

ried it off; it was held, that a suit for the loss, as being occasioned by the non-repair of the bridge, could not be maintained. Dubuque Wood, etc., Assn. v. Dubuque, 30 Ia. 176. See Morrison v. Davis, 20 Pa. St. 171; Hoadley v. Nor. Transp. Co., 115 Mass. 304; Scott v. Hunter, 46 Pa. St. 192.

The burning of a lot of cotton in a high wind by sparks from a burning building was held to be not the proximate result of failing to forward it promptly from the cotton yard. Wharfboat Assn. v. Wood, 64 Miss. 661.

water ran down a gutter, and would in fact (m) (but for a hard frost which had then set in for some time) have run harmlessly down a grating into the sewer, at a corner some twenty-five yards from where the van was washed. As it happened, the grating was frozen over, the water spread out and froze into a sheet of ice, and a led horse of the plaintiff's slipped thereon and broke its knee. It did not appear that the defendant or his servants knew of the stoppage of the grating. The Court thought the damage was not "within the ordinary consequences" (n) of such an act as the defendant's, not one which the defendant could fairly be expected to anticipate as likely to ensue from his act" (o): he "could not reasonably be expected to foresee that the water would accumulate and freeze at the spot where the accident happened" (p)

Question, if the same rule holds for consequences of wilful wrong: Clark v. Chambers. Some doubt appears to be cast on the rule thus laid down - which, it is submitted, is the right one by what was said a few years later in Clark v. Chambers (9), though not by the decision itself. This case raises the question whether the liability of a wrong-doer may not extend even to remote and unlikely consequences, where the original wrong is a wilful trespass, or consists in the unlawful or careless use of a dangerous instrument. The main facts were as follows:

1. The defendant without authority set a barrier, partly armed with spikes (chevaux-de-frise), across a road subject to other persons' rights of way. An opening was at most times left in the middle of the barrier, and was there at the time when the mischief happened.

(m) So the Court found, having power to draw inferences of fact.

(n) Grove J.

(p) Bovill C. J.

(9) 3 Q. B. D. 327, 47 L. J. Q. B. 427 (1878).

(0) Keating J.

2. The plaintiff went after dark along this road and through the opening, by the invitation of the occupier of one of the houses to which the right of using the road belonged, and in order to go to that house.

3. Some one, not the defendant or any one authorized by him, had removed one of the chevaux-de-frise barriers, and set it on end on the footpath. It was suggested, but not proved, that this was done by a person entitled to use the road, in exercise of his right to remove the unlawful obstruction.

4. Returning later in the evening from his friend's house, the plaintiff, after safely passing through the central opening above mentioned, turned on to the footpath. He there came against the chevaux-de-frise thus displaced (which he could not see, the night being very dark), and one of the spikes put out his eye.

-

After a verdict for the plaintiff the case was reserved for further consideration, and the Court (r) held that the damage was nearly enough connected with the défendant's first wrongful act — namely, obstructing the road with instruments dangerous to people lawfully using it for the plaintiff to be entitled to judgment. It is not obvious why and how, if the consequence in Clark v. Chambers, was natural and probable enough to justify a verdict for the plaintiff, that in Sharp v. Powell was too remote to be submitted to a jury at all. The Court did not dispute the correctness of the judgments in Sharp v. Powell" as applicable to the circumstances of the particular case;" but their final observations (s) certainly tend to the opinion that in a case of active wrong-doing the rule is different. Such an opinion, it is submitted, is against the general weight of authority, and against the principles underlying the author

(r) Cockburn C. J. and Manisty J. The point chiefly argued for the defendant seems to have been that the intervention of a third person's act prevented him from being liable; a position

which is clearly untenable (see Scott v. Shepherd); but the judgment is of wider scope.

( 8 ) 3 Q. B. D. at p. 338.

ities (). However, their conclusion may be supported, and may have been to some extent determined, by the special rule imposing the duty of what has been called "consummate caution" on persons dealing with dangerous instruments.

Consequences natural in kind though not in circumstance. Perhaps the real solution is that here, as in Hill v. New River Co., the kind of harm which in fact happened might have been expected, though the precise manner in which it happened was determined by an extraneous accident. If in this case the spikes had not been disturbed, and the plaintiff had in the dark missed the free space left in the barrier, and run against the spiked part of it, the defendant's liability could not have been disputed. As it was, the obstruction was not exactly where the defendant had put it, but still it was an obstruction to that road which had been wrongfully brought there by him. He had put it in the plaintiff's way no less than Shepherd put his squib in the way of striking Scott; whereas in Sharp v. Powell the mischief was not of a kind which the defendant had any reason to foresee.

The turn taken by the discussion in Clark v. Chambers, was, in this view, unnecessary, and it is to be regretted that a considered judgment was delivered in a form tending to unsettle an accepted rule without putting anything definite in its place. On the whole, I submit that, whether Clark v. Chambers can stand with it or not, both principle and the current of authority concur to maintain the law as declared in Sharp v. Powell.

Damages for "nervous or mental shock" whether too Where a wrongful or negligent act of A., threat

remote.

(t) Compare the cases on slander collected in the notes to Vicars v. Wilcocks, 2 Sm. L. C. Compare also, as to conse

quential liability for disregard of statutory provisions, Gorris v. Scott (1874), L. R. 9 Ex. 125, 43 L. J. Ex. 92.

It

Damages for "nervous or mental shock” whether too remote. is a rule based upon the very best of reason that damages for fright,