## Facts

- A village contracted with an electric company to reconstruct the village’s electric system, including installation of a transformer pole near the Goar residence.
- The contract provided a one-year warranty and assigned the village responsibility for inspection, care, and maintenance after the system was turned over.
- The contractor placed two insulated high-voltage wires on the transformer pole too close together, allowing wind to cause rubbing that gradually wore the insulation.
- After the village accepted the system, it failed to inspect or maintain the pole for roughly seventeen to eighteen months.
- The insulation ultimately failed; a high-voltage line contacted a telephone line leading into the Goar home, and a dangerous current was transmitted through the telephone.
- Goar’s wife was severely injured while using the phone.
- Goar sued the village for loss of his wife’s services and society; a jury returned a verdict for Goar.

## Issues

1. Whether the village’s extended failure to inspect and maintain the electric system, after accepting control and assuming that duty, was the proximate cause of the injury.
2. Whether the contractor’s original negligent installation remained a proximate cause despite the passage of time and the village’s intervening nonperformance.
3. Whether the evidence supported the verdict against the village and denial of its motion for a new trial.

## Decision

- The Minnesota Supreme Court upheld liability against the village, treating its post-transfer failure to inspect and maintain as the effective proximate cause.
- The court concluded that the village’s negligence functioned as an intervening, superseding cause that broke the causal connection between the contractor’s earlier negligence and the injury.
- The village’s appeal from the order denying a new trial was unsuccessful.

## Legal Principles

- When control of a dangerous instrumentality has passed to another entity that has an affirmative duty to inspect and maintain it, an extended failure to perform that duty can become the proximate cause of resulting harm.
- An intervening act or omission may be a superseding cause when it operates as an independent producing agency sufficient to break the causal chain from an earlier negligent act.
- Policy considerations support limiting a contractor’s liability after the owner or municipality accepts the work and assumes ongoing responsibility for inspection and maintenance, particularly where a substantial time has elapsed.

## Conclusion

The court treated the village’s prolonged nonperformance of its contractual duty to inspect and maintain the electric system, after accepting control, as a superseding cause and the proximate cause of the injury, leaving the village liable while cutting off liability based on the contractor’s earlier installation defect.


Goar v. Vill. of Stephen, 196 N.W. 171 (Minn. 1923)