noting that the “legal fiction that firemen are licensees . . . is without any logical foundation,” as it is “highly illogical to say that a fireman who enters the premises quite independently of either invitation or consent cannot be an invitee because there has been no invitation, but can be a licensee even though there has been no permission”
How later courts described this case
- noting that the “legal fiction that firemen are licensees . . . is without any logical foundation,” as it is “highly illogical to say that a fireman who enters the premises quite independently of either invitation or consent cannot be an invitee because there has been no invitation, but can be a licensee even though there has been no permission”
- stating that "an action should lie against a landowner for failure to exercise reasonable, care in the maintenance of his property"
- recovery allowed where firefighters were injured and killed when a defectively- constructed staircase in a burning building collapsed and evidence showed that the staircase was unaffected by the fire and there were numerous violations of fire safety ordinances
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Klingbiel, also dissenting:
I wish to add my full accord with the views of Mr. Chief Justice Schaefer in his dissent on the consortium question.
I must also express my disagreement with the majority opinion on the matter of liability. Under our system of justice responsibility in these cases is based upon negligence, and the negligence must be a proximate cause of the injury. I agree with the court that negligence was shown in these cases, not because of the ordinance violations upon which the majority opinion lays so much stress, but because of the operative facts themselves.
I do not agree, however, with the apparently tacit conclusion that liability follows as a matter of course. The other requirement of negligence law — that the injuries be proximately caused by the negligence — also deserves attention. There is no doubt on this record that a jury could reasonably find the negligence was a proximate cause of the fire; and the defendants would be liable, of course, for any other damage or injury proximately caused thereby. But the very question in the case is whether the injuries in question were so caused. To stop after finding the mere existence of negligence, and then to announce liability with nothing more than the statement that the “violations proximately caused the injuries,” is to decide a case by bare fiat.
It seems to me that the injuries sustained here could not be reasonably foreseen as a result of the mere accumulation of trash and the other conditions to which reference is made in the majority opinion. Most fires start, no doubt, from carelessness on the part of someone, but we can hardly predicate on such flimsy grounds a liability for every injury that would not have happened but for the fire. If a spectator should faint from the excitement, or suffer a heart attack from the shock of such a tragedy, there would be just as much basis for recovery as shown by the present record. Such consequences, while possible of course, are much too remote to afforded grounds for liability.
A third objection should receive some mention, perhaps. The matters in which this court has jurisdiction on direct appeal are plainly stated in the statute, and they do not include personal injury cases. Unless procedural requirements of this nature are to become mere matters of conjecture on the part of the bar, opinions in cases which apparently fail to meet them, and which are nevertheless taken on the merits, should point out the grounds upon which direct appeal is authorized. I see none in the records of the present cases.
As to the substantive issues I would affirm the judgments of the superior court.
Mr. Justice House, also dissenting.