Section VIII
Contributory Culpable Conduct of Plaintiff
NEAL v. GILLETT
Supreme Court of Errors, Connecticut, June Term, 1855.
Reported in 23 Connecticut Reports, 437.
Action to recover for personal injury alleged to have been incurred through the negligence of the defendants. Plaintiff claimed that the defendants were guilty of gross negligence, as the cause of the injury; and that, if the jury should so find, the plaintiff was entitled to recover notwithstanding there had been on his part a want of mere ordinary care which might have essentially contributed to produce the injury complained of. The Court charged the jury in conformity to this claim of the plaintiff. Verdict for plaintiff. Motion for new trial.
Sanford, J. [Omitting opinion on another point.][[176]] The question presented upon the second point, is, whether a plaintiff is entitled to recover for an injury, produced by the combined operation of his own want of “ordinary care,” and the gross negligence of the defendant. The exact boundaries between the several degrees of care and their correlative degrees of carelessness, or negligence, are not always clearly defined or easily pointed out. We think, however, that by “ordinary care,” is meant “that degree of care which may reasonably be expected from a person in the party’s situation” (41 E. C. L. R. 425),[[177]] that is, “reasonable care” (19 Conn. R. 572); and that “gross negligence” imports not a malicious intention or design to produce a particular injury, but a thoughtless disregard of consequences; the absence, rather than the actual exercise, of volition with reference to results.
What is the measure of “reasonable care” must of course depend upon the circumstances of the particular situation in which the party at the time is placed. But “reasonable care,” every one, in the enjoyment of his rights, and the performance of his duties, is bound to exercise at all times and under all circumstances. When he has done that, he is answerable to no one for any consequences which ensue, for he has done all his duty; when he has done less than that he is in fault, and if an injury ensue to another in consequence of such fault, he is responsible for it; if to himself, he must bear it. If in the enjoyment of their lawful rights by two persons, at the same time and place, reasonable care is exercised by both, and an injury accrues to one of them, it must be borne by the suffering party as a providential visitation. If such care is exercised by neither party, and an injury accrues to one of them, he must bear it, for he was himself in fault. And we hold that when the gist of the action is negligence merely,—whether gross or slight, the plaintiff is not entitled to recover, when his own want of ordinary, or reasonable care, has essentially contributed to his injury; because he is himself in fault, and because of the difficulty, if not impossibility, of ascertaining in what proportions the parties respectively, by their negligence, have contributed to the production of the injury, and whether it would have been produced at all but by the combined operation of the negligence of both. When the injury is intentional, and designed, other considerations apply.
For anything this Court can see, the negligence of the defendants, however gross, might have been entirely harmless, but for the plaintiff’s own wrongful contribution to the combined causes which produced his injury. And so too, for anything this Court can see, although the defendants’ negligence was gross, and fully adequate to the production of the injury, yet the plaintiff’s exercise of reasonable care would have saved him from its consequences.
In the recent case of Park v. O’Brien, 23 Conn. R. 339, this Court said, “It is necessary for the plaintiff, to prove, first, negligence on the part of the defendant, and, secondly, that the injury to the plaintiff occurred in consequence of that negligence. But in order to prove this latter point, the plaintiff must show that such injury was not caused, wholly, or in part, by his own negligence;[[178]] for although the defendant was guilty of negligence, if the plaintiff’s negligence contributed essentially to the injury, it is obvious that it did not occur by reason of the defendant’s negligence.” “Hence, to say that the plaintiff must show the latter” [the want of the plaintiff’s concurring negligence], “is only saying that he must show that the injury was owing to the negligence of the defendant.”
The same reasonable doctrine is sanctioned by other decisions, in our own Court and elsewhere. Birge v. Gardiner, 19 Conn. R. 507; Beers v. Housatonic R. R. Co., 19 Conn. R. 566, and cases there cited.
We think, therefore, that the charge of the Court, on this point, was wrong, and that a new trial ought to be granted.
In this opinion the other judges concurred, except Ellsworth, J., who was disqualified.