Consolidated Gas Co. v. Crocker

McSherry, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The only questions we have before us on this appeal are those which arise in consequence of the rejection by the trial Court of the prayers presented by the defendant for instructions to the jury, and those which grow out of the granting by the Court of three instructions of its own. The case is one founded in alleged negligence. The fundamental principles which must govern its decision are thoroughly settled and established.

To apply those principles correctly is all that is required. The defendant below, the appellant here, is a gas company. It manufactures and supplies gas for illuminating purposes. The gas is transmitted through mains and pipes underneath the surface of streets into houses and elsewhere.

The plaintiff below, the appellee here, leased and occupied certain premises in Baltimore City. In those premises he conducted a saloon. He moved into them on or about the twentieth of November, 1891. At that time the odor of escaping gas was very perceptible in the cellar of the house.

When an employee of the gas company was notified that the gas was escaping and accumulating in the cellar, he stated that another employee of the company would be sent to remove the old meter and to replace it with a new one, as was customary whenever there was a change in the occupants of premises ; and when the attention of the employee who did remove the old meter was called to this odor he stated that he guessed the new meter would remedy .the matter. In fact, however, this did not furnish a remedy, and gas continued to flow into the cellar to such an extent that it was necessary to keep the door closed at the head ¹¹⁹ of the stairway leading from the cellar into the dining-room. There was evidence tending to show that the gas escaped from a main which ran under and parallel to the sidewalk, and that thus escaping it penetrated the front wall of the premises occupied by the plaintiff. In the cellar there was a gasoline stove used for cooking oysters.

On the evening of December the third, 1891, Mrs. Staenglen, an employee of the appellee, went into the cellar for the purpose of frying some oysters. She closed the door behind her at the head of the cellar stairway. She took with her a lighted coal oil lamp and placed it on a bracket near the top of the cellar, and then proceeded to ignite the gasoline in the stove. The cellar had been opened but once in the preceding twenty-four hours, and then only for a brief period.

She struck several matches, but there being apparently some water in the cup of the stove the gasoline did not vaporize and burn. Mrs. Bryant, an acquaintance of Mrs. Staenglen, then entered the cellar, but left the door leading to the dining-room open. In the dining-room and just opposite the door leading into the cellar two gas jets were burning. According to the testimony of Mrs. Staenglen she threw a basin of water containing a few spoonfuls of gasoline on the coal pile, and in about two minutes after again lighting the gasoline stove, which immediately went out, she happened to look in the direction of the steps leading up to the dining-room and there she saw a sheet of bluish flame which was instantly followed by an explosion.

This explosion occurred in about ten minutes after Mrs. Staenglen had entered the cellar with the lighted coal oil lamp. This lamp continued to burn during the whole time Mrs. Staenglen was in the cellar. The force of the explosion was so great that it threw Mrs. Bryant out of the front cellar door and did considerable damage to the building. The coal oil lamp suspended in the cellar was uninjured, but the globes on the gas jets in the dining-room were shattered.

According to the testimony of Mrs. Bryant, who was called as a witness for the defendant, Mrs. Staenglen emptied the gasoline out of the ¹²⁰ stove into a basin and then replenished the stove and threw the basin full of gasoline on the coal pile. Sh¿ further stated that after this Mrs. Staenglen lit several matches to start the fire in the stove and that shortly after the explosion occurred. It was further shown that after the explosion had taken place several persons entered the cellar and found a blaze proceeding apparently from burning oil in the coal pile. By rejecting the defendant’s first prayer the Court refused to rule that in law the act of entering the cellar with the lighted coal oil lamp, under the circumstances stated, was such a glaring act of contributory negligence contributing to the injury complained of as to preclude a recovery by the plaintiff.

Had it been a concessum in the case, or had it even been clear from the evidence that the lighted coal oil lamp carried into the cellar caused the explosion, there would have been some foundation for imputing contributory negligence to the plaintiffs employee in carrying it there. Not only does it not appear that the carrying of the lamp into the cellar actually caused the explosion, but the defendant, on the contrary, strenuously insists that there was no explosion of gas at all, but that the explosion proceeded from gasoline. When large quantities of gas have escaped into a building and have commingled with the air therein and thus formed a highly explosive compound, and this condition is known to a person entering such building, it is obviously in law a grossly negligent act to enter with a lighted candle or lamp, or to strike a match after entering; because according to known and unvarying laws an explosion or a suddenly liberated mechanical energy resulting from the instantaneous combustion of the inflammable compound when brought in contact with a flame, will inevitably follow. And when under these conditions an explosion does instantly result the moment a flame is brought, in contact with such a compound of gas and atmosphere,, the fact that the flame caused the combustion and the consequent and simultaneous explosion is beyond reasonable ¹²¹ dispute or question.

The deliberate or the careless application of a flame to such an explosive compound is clearly an act of negligence so unequivocally contributing to the production of the injury that no recovery can be had by the person guilty of br chargeable with that act of concurrent negligence. And this is precisely what was decided in Lanigan v. N. Y. Gas Co., 71 N. Y. 29 ; Oil City Gas Co. v. Robinson, 99 Pa. St. 1. In these cases the explosion instantly followed upon a light being brought in contact with the gas and there could be no possible dispute that the bringing of the light in contact with the gas caused the explosion.

But where there is not such a connection between the act of entering the house with a lighted lamp and the explosion of the gas as to establish with certainty and to the exclusion of any other reasonable hypothesis the relation of cause and effect, the question as to what did cause the explosion is for the jury to solve under proper instructions from the Court. When, therefore, as here, more than ten minutes intervened between the time the lamp was taken into the cellar and the time that the subsequent explosion-occurred ; and when, as here, the lamp itself was uninjured, it would be impossible for the Court to assume that the-lighted lamp caused the explosion, and to rule as a conclusion of law that the plaintiff’s employee was guilty of contributory negligence in taking the lamp into the cellar. And this is true also with respect to the lighting of the matches to ignite the gasoline in the stove. Assuming, as must be done in discussing this prayer, that all the evidence adduced, by the plaintiff was true, then at least two minutes intervened between the period of time when the last match was struck and the stove was lighted and extinguished for the last time, and the period when the explosion took place, and there was obviously, therefore, no evidence to show that the explosion proceeded from these matches or from the stove.

If, then, the evidence failed to show affirmatively and without dispute that the explosion resulted from the lighted lamp or from the burning matches being brought ¹²² in contact with the gas, it would have been improper for the Court to say as a legal conclusion that the taking of the lighted lamp into the cellar or the striking of the matches there, was an act of contributory negligence directly contributing to the production of the injuiy complained of, because unless the explosion did result from the one or the other causing a combustion, then neither the one nor the other contributed to the explosion. If there is no evidence to show that a particular act of imputed negligence did actually concur in producing an injury, then there is no evidence that the doing of that act was in itself contributory negligence, and it would be clearly erroneous to ascribe to it that character or quality. To justify a Court in pronouncing a given act such an act of contributory negligence as to defeat a recovery it must be a