## Facts

- A flood damaged an electric utility’s regular transmission route, so the utility installed a temporary high-voltage line over a wooded lot owned by Thomas with Thomas’s consent.
- The temporary line was strung in a manner that allowed it to sag and come into contact with, or close enough to energize, a barbed-wire fence on the property.
- Humphrey entered Thomas’s land to hunt without Thomas’s permission.
- Humphrey touched the barbed-wire fence and was severely shocked; his companion was killed.
- Humphrey alleged physical injuries and traumatic neurosis (nervous/mental injury) resulting from the shock.
- Humphrey sued the utility for negligent construction and maintenance of the temporary line and for allowing electricity to escape onto the fence.
- The trial court directed a verdict for the utility and excluded expert testimony offered to prove traumatic neurosis.

## Issues

1. Whether the unexplained escape of high-voltage electricity from the utility’s line to a fence permitted an inference of negligence under res ipsa loquitur, making the case one for the jury.
2. Whether the plaintiff’s status as a trespasser on the landowner’s property barred recovery against a third-party utility operating a dangerous instrumentality over the property with the landowner’s permission.
3. Whether expert medical testimony regarding traumatic neurosis was admissible and whether such nervous/mental injury is compensable when proximately caused by a negligent electric shock.

## Decision

- The Vermont Supreme Court reversed the directed verdict and remanded for a new trial.
- The court held that res ipsa loquitur applied because the escape of current from a high-voltage line to a fence is an event that ordinarily does not occur absent negligence, and the utility’s equipment remained within its control for purposes of the inference.
- The court held that the plaintiff’s trespasser status as to the landowner did not bar recovery against the utility, which was neither possessor nor occupier of the land.
- The court held it was error to exclude expert testimony on traumatic neurosis, which could be considered as part of damages proximately caused by the defendant’s conduct.

## Legal Principles

- Res ipsa loquitur may allow a jury to infer negligence when a high-voltage electric current escapes from a utility’s line to energize nearby objects and cause injury, absent an adequate explanation consistent with due care.
- Operators of high-voltage electrical lines must use a degree of care commensurate with the danger of the instrumentality.
- A defendant’s tort duty is not necessarily limited by landowner entrant categories when the defendant is not the land’s possessor; the duty extends to persons foreseeably exposed to the defendant’s dangerous operations even if they are trespassers as to the landowner.
- A plaintiff may recover all damages proximately resulting from negligence, including nervous or mental injury associated with a physical impact; qualified expert testimony is admissible to prove such conditions.

## Conclusion

The court required a jury trial because the electrification of the fence supported an inference of negligence, rejected trespasser status as a categorical defense for a nonpossessory utility, and allowed expert evidence of traumatic neurosis as a recoverable element of damages if causally connected to the electric shock.


Humphrey v. Twin State Gas & Elec. Co., 100 Vt. 414, 139 A. 440 (Vt. 1927)