McCORD RUBBER CO. v. St. JOSEPH WATER CO.
Supreme Court, Missouri, May 25, 1904.
Reported in 181 Missouri Reports, 678.
Appeal from Buchanan Circuit Court.
Action for damages for the flooding of plaintiff’s cellar with water caused by defendant’s negligence, whereby a large quantity of its goods stored in the cellar were damaged. Answer, a general denial.[[296]]
Defendant company supplied water distributed through pipes and mains from reservoirs. A service pipe from a main carried water to a building occupied by one August. There was a bursting in a “fish trap” used in connection with the service pipe. Water escaped on to the premises of August, and from thence to the adjoining premises of the plaintiff company. The jury found a verdict for the defendant. In view of the instructions given, this verdict must be regarded as negativing the allegations of negligence contained in the plaintiff’s pleading.
Judgment having been rendered for defendant, the plaintiff appealed.
[Arguments and part of opinion omitted.]
Valliant, J.... III. The plaintiff contends, however, that the defendants are liable regardless of whether they were guilty of any negligence directly causing the accident. This contention rests in the theory that one who brings into his premises anything that is liable to escape, and liable to inflict injury on his neighbors if it should escape, brings it there at his peril, and is responsible for any injury that it may cause.
That contention rests for its authority on the decision in Rylands v. Fletcher, L. R. 3 H. L. 330. In the briefs of the learned counsel for respondents, reference is made to a large number of authorities going to show that the doctrine of Rylands v. Fletcher has not been approved generally in America, and that it has been modified in England. Among the authorities so referred to are Griffith v. Lewis, 17 Mo. App. 605; Murphy v. Gillum, 73 Mo. App. 487; Cooley on Torts, 570; Losee v. Buchanan, 51 N. Y. 476; Brown v. Collins, 53 N. H. 442.
But in the facts, the case at bar is distinguished from Rylands v. Fletcher.
[After stating the facts of Rylands v. Fletcher, and quoting from the opinion of Lord Chancellor Cairns.] There is a wide difference between a great volume of water collected in a reservoir in dangerous proximity to the premises of another and water brought into a house through pipes in the manner usual in all cities, for the ordinary use of the occupants of the house. Whilst water so brought into a house cannot literally be said to have come in in the course of what might be called in the language above quoted of the Lord Chancellor “natural user” of the premises, yet it is brought in by the method universally in use in cities and is not to be treated as an unnatural gathering of a dangerous agent. The law applicable to the caging of ferocious animals is not applicable to water brought into a house by pipes in the usual manner.