## Facts

- Bryan C. Berry worked as a streetcar motorman for a traction company operating in the Borough of Sugar Notch under a municipal ordinance.
- The ordinance limited streetcar speed on borough streets to no more than eight miles per hour.
- A large chestnut tree stood within the lines of Main Street in the borough; the jury’s verdict established it was in a dangerous condition and that the borough was negligent in allowing it to remain.
- During a violent windstorm, as Berry’s streetcar passed beneath the tree, the tree blew down onto the car, crushing the roof and injuring Berry.
- Evidence showed Berry was operating the car above the ordinance limit (approximately fifteen miles per hour by his testimony).
- The borough argued Berry’s ordinance violation barred recovery because the excessive speed brought the car under the tree at the moment it fell and because the speed limit was a condition of the company’s right to operate.

## Issues

1. Whether a motorman’s violation of a borough speed-limit ordinance bars recovery against the borough for injuries caused by a hazardous tree in the street.
2. Whether the motorman’s excessive speed was a proximate cause of the injury, or merely a coincidental circumstance.

## Decision

- The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed the judgment for Berry.
- The court held that Berry’s violation of the speed ordinance did not bar recovery because it did not cause the accident or contribute as a proximate cause.
- The court rejected the contention that exceeding a condition in the operating ordinance stripped Berry of the right to use the streets or to recover for the borough’s independent negligence.
- The court treated the timing argument—that speed placed the car under the tree at the instant it fell—as insufficient for legal causation on these facts.

## Legal Principles

- A plaintiff’s violation of a statute or ordinance does not defeat recovery unless the violation is a proximate cause of the injury.
- Causation requires more than showing the violation placed the plaintiff at the location of harm; a temporal coincidence is not a legal cause.
- A statutory or ordinance violation is relevant to contributory negligence only when it increases the risk of the kind of harm that occurred or deprives the plaintiff of an opportunity to avoid a foreseeable danger.
- Municipal liability for a dangerous condition in a public street is not negated by a plaintiff’s unrelated ordinance violation.

## Conclusion

Because the tree fell directly onto the moving streetcar during a windstorm and Berry’s excessive speed neither caused the fall nor prevented avoidance of a foreseeable hazard, the borough’s negligent maintenance of a dangerous tree remained the operative cause of the injury, and Berry’s ordinance violation did not bar recovery.


Berry v. Sugar Notch Borough, 191 Pa. 345, 43 A. 240 (1899)