Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/112

84 84 HARVARD LAW REVIEW, sible for the damage, though he did not know that the place into which the water flowed was a mine.^ Defendant threw a stone at deceased ; the stone unexpectedly hit deceased on the head, and by a singular chance killed him. Defendant is guilty of man- slaughter.2 A pregnant woman was put off a train at the wrong place ; she was forced to walk three miles, and the result was a miscarriage. The act of injury consisted in placing the woman where she must walk, and the railroad company being responsible for that is liable for the direct though unexpected result.^ A rail- road train was negligently stopped on a trestle, and the passenger allowed to alight under the supposition that the train had stopped at his station. He fell through the trestle, and suffered an injury which so weakened him that he died of a slight disease contracted before his recovery from the injury. The railroad company, being legally responsible for the combination of injury and disease, is liable for the unusual result.* We see, then, how liability for the result follows from responsi- bility for its proximate cause. It remains necessary to establish a connection between defendant and the act of injury; but this is to be done upon general grounds of liabihty. Professor Wigmore has lately suggested certain principles upon which liability for a tort is to be determined.^ The same principles determine criminal responsibility, and I see no reason to assume that they are not also sufficient to determine the estimation of damages. Let us then see what will result from an appHcation of these principles to our problem. The defendant's act, in the first instance, consisted in setting some force in motion ; and we are to hold him responsible for the act of injury on the ground that this force is a factor of the act. We are to show, then, in the first place, that the act may properly be called defendant's act because of this force which he set in motion ; and that being done, we are to show that the defendant is to be held legally responsible for his act. 4. One at least of the factors of the act of injury must in a fair sense be due to the defendant. If the force he set in motion has become, so to speak, merged in the general forces which surround 1 Rylands v. Fletcher, L. R. 3 H. L. 330, Smith Cas. Torts, 316. 2 See Holly v. State, 10 Humph. 141. 4 Terre Haute & I. R. R. v. Buck, 96 Ind. 346. 5 8 Harvard Law Review, 377.
 * Brown v. M. & S. P. Ry., 54 Wis. 342.