Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 17.pdf/582

 NOTES OF RECENT CASES There was testimony that a certain negro had been seen passing in and out of the house several times before the fire. There was no evidence that the tenant had anything to do with the fire, unless his negligence in leaving the door unlocked and thus affording an opportunity for third persons to enter and set fire to the house was to be regarded as the proximate cause of the fire. This the court denies, citing Connell r. C. & O. Ry. Co., 93 Va. 57, 24 S. E. 467; Fowlkes v. Southern Ry. Co., 96 Va. 743, 32 S. E. 464; Watts v. South ern Bell Tel. Co., 100 Va. 45, 40 S. E. 107; and Standard Oil Co. v. Wakefield, 102 Va. 824, 47 S.E. 830, upon the general doctrine of proximate cause. These cases announce the principle that to warrant a finding that negligence or an act not amounting to wanton wrong is the proximate cause of an injury, it must appear that the injury was the natural and probable consequence of the negligence or wrongful act, and that it ought to have been foreseen in the light of the attending circumstances. Under these principles it is con cluded that it cannot be maintained that the natural and expected result of leaving the up-stairs door of an empty house unlocked is, that some one who has no right there will enter the house and burn it and that the act of a third person was the efficient, intervening, and proximate cause of the damage, so that the tenant, if negligent, was not liable. Winfree v. Jones, 51 Southeastern Reporter, 153. PHYSICIANS. (ASSAULT — UNAUTHORIZED SUR GICAL OPERATION) MINNESOTA SUPREME COURT. A physician was consulted concerning a diffi culty affecting the patient's right ear. After ex amining the organ, the physician advised an opera tion to which the patient consented. After being placed under the influence of anaesthetics, and when .the patient was unconscious therefrom, the physician examined her left ear and found it in a more serious condition than her right, and in greater need of an operation. He called the at tention of the patient's family physician to the conditions he had discovered, and it was finally concluded that the operation should be performed upon the left, instead of the right ear, to which the family physician made no objection. The patient had not previously experienced any dif ficulty with her left ear and was not informed, prior to the time she was placed under the influ ence of anaesthetics, that any difficulty existed with reference to it, and, she, of course, did not consent to an operation thereon. The action of the physician was held to constitute in law an assault and battery, unless a consent by the patient

555

could be implied from circumstances, and this, under the evidence, was held to be a question for the jury. Mohr v. Williams, 104 Northwestern Reporter, 12. PUBLIC NUISANCE. (STREET FAIR — POWER OF CITY COUNCIL) GEORGIA SUPREME COURT. In City Council of Augusta v. Reynolds, 50 Southeastern Reporter, 998, the Supreme Court of Georgia announces that a fair, occupying, for over a week, seventy or eighty feet in width and four blocks in length of an important business street in the city, and consisting of numerous tents, inclosing shows and exhibitions, in front of which are stationed men blowing horns and talking through megaphones to attract atten tion, together with various other stands, booths, structures, Ferris wheels, merry-go-rounds, and other devices for amusement for the public and profit to the owners, a company of state militia, is a public nuisance of a most aggravated nature. Some of the old English cases which held that a fair in a highway is permissible, for example, Elwood v. Bullock, 15 L. J. N. S. and King v. Smith, 4 E. S. P. 109, are referred to, and it is shown that the rule in those cases was based upon the existence of an immemorial custom in addition to which, it is to be remarked, that the old Eng lish fairs were very different enterprises from the one described. It is also held that there is noth ing in an ordinary city charter which permits the city authorities to grant the use of its streets for the operation of an enterprise of the nature described. PUBLIC SCHOOLS. (RELIGIOUS EXERCISES — READING OF SCRIPTURE) KENTUCKY COURT OP APPEALS. Hackett v. Brooksville Graded School District, 87 Southwestern Reporter, 792, is a recent au thority for three different and interrelated prop ositions, relative to religious worship in public schools. It is held that a prayer offered at the opening of a public school, imploring the aid and presence of the Heavenly Father during the day's work, asking for wisdom, patience, mutual love, and respect; looking forward to a heavenly re union after death, and concluding in Christ's name, is not sectarian and does not make the school a sectarian school within the provision of the Kentucky constitution, prohibiting the ap propriation of educational funds for the support of sectarian schools. It is likewise decided that a public school, opened with prayer and by reading, without comment, of passages from King James'