## Facts

- A fire negligently started by the railroad spread toward the plaintiff’s property.
- Around the same time, a second fire of unknown origin (not attributed to the plaintiff) burned in the area.
- The two fires were of roughly equal strength and merged before reaching the plaintiff’s timber and other property.
- After the fires merged, the plaintiff’s property was destroyed in a single, indivisible loss.
- Either fire, standing alone, was sufficient to have caused the entire destruction, and it was impossible to allocate which fire caused which part of the damage.
- The railroad argued it was not liable because the plaintiff could not prove the railroad’s fire was a necessary (“but-for”) cause given the independent second fire.

## Issues

1. Whether a negligent defendant is a legal cause of an indivisible loss when its fire merges with another independent fire of comparable force and either fire alone was sufficient to cause the entire damage.
2. Whether the presence of another sufficient cause, including one of unknown origin, defeats liability absent proof that the other cause was so overwhelming as to supersede the defendant’s conduct.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Wisconsin affirmed judgment for the plaintiff.
- The court held the railroad liable for the full damage.
- The court rejected the argument that the plaintiff had to prove the railroad’s fire alone would have caused the loss under a strict but-for test.
- The court treated the merged fires as concurrent sufficient causes producing an indivisible harm.
- The court declined to treat the other fire as superseding absent evidence it was so overpowering that the railroad’s fire was insignificant.

## Legal Principles

- When independent forces combine to cause a single, indivisible injury, and each force would have been sufficient to cause the injury by itself, each force may be treated as a legal (proximate) cause of the entire harm.
- In multiple sufficient cause cases, strict but-for causation does not bar recovery where it would otherwise permit negligent actors to avoid liability solely because another sufficient cause occurred.
- A defendant seeking to avoid liability on the theory of a superseding cause bears the burden of producing evidence that the other cause was so extraordinary or overwhelming that it displaced the defendant’s causal responsibility.
- Where harm cannot be reasonably apportioned after concurrent causes merge, the plaintiff need not prove what portion of the damage each cause produced.

## Conclusion

The court imposed liability on a negligent railroad whose fire merged with another independent, sufficient fire to destroy the plaintiff’s property, holding that concurrent sufficient causes can each be a legal cause of an indivisible loss even when the plaintiff cannot prove strict but-for causation or apportion damage between causes.


Kingston v. Chi. & Nw. Ry. Co., 211 N.W. 913 (Wis. 1927)