It seems to
be admitted by the English judges that, even on the question
whether the acts of leaving dry trimmings in hot weather by the
side of a railroad, and then sending an engine over the track,
are [93] negligent,--that is, are a ground of liability,--the
consequences which might reasonably be anticipated are material.
/1/ Yet these are acts which, under the circumstances, can hardly
be called innocent in their natural and obvious effects. The same
doctrine has been applied to acts in violation of statute which
could not reasonably have been expected to lead to the result
complained of. /2/
But there is no difference in principle between the case where a
natural cause or physical factor intervenes after the act in some
way not to be foreseen, and turns what seemed innocent to harm,
and the case where such a cause or factor intervenes, unknown, at
the time; as, for the matter of that, it did in the English cases
cited. If a man is excused in the one case because he is not to
blame, he must be in the other. The difference taken in Gibbons
v. Pepper, cited above, is not between results which are and
those which are not the consequences of the defendant's acts: it
is between consequences which he was bound as a reasonable man to
contemplate, and those which he was not.
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