## Facts

- Clarence H. Newlin owned and operated a mushroom-growing plant on Washington Street in Groveland, Massachusetts.
- New England Telephone & Telegraph Company maintained a telephone pole on the same street a short distance from Newlin’s plant.
- Newlin alleged the company had a legal obligation to use strong and sufficient poles but maintained a pole that was weak and defective.
- Newlin alleged the company knew, or in the exercise of reasonable diligence should have known, of the pole’s defective condition.
- On July 14, 1937, the pole fell due to the company’s negligent maintenance.
- When the pole fell, it carried away a power line that served Newlin’s plant.
- The loss of electrical service disabled Newlin’s electrical apparatus used in mushroom cultivation, causing temperature to rise and destroying a mushroom crop.

## Issues

1. Whether the declaration stated, with substantial certainty, substantive facts sufficient to plead a negligence cause of action against the telephone company.
2. Whether the alleged harm to Newlin’s crop was sufficiently connected to the pole’s fall to satisfy duty and proximate causation at the pleading stage.

## Decision

- The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts reversed the order sustaining the demurrer.
- The court held the declaration adequately pleaded a common-law negligence claim, including duty, breach, and resulting damage.
- The demurrer should have been overruled.

## Legal Principles

- A plaintiff may recover in tort when another’s wrongful conduct causes temporal loss or property damage.
- The possibility of harm to a class of persons of which the plaintiff is a member supports a duty to exercise reasonable care to avoid conduct creating such harm.
- A negligent actor is liable for injury proximately resulting to another’s person or property even if the actor did not reasonably anticipate the particular manner in which the injury occurred.
- Under Massachusetts pleading rules, a tort declaration must state substantive facts with substantial certainty; allegations describing the defective condition, negligent maintenance, causal sequence, and specific property damage are sufficient to withstand demurrer.
- Where the declaration is framed as common-law negligence, the claim need not depend on establishing a statutory cause of action, even if it references a general legal obligation.

## Conclusion

The court held that allegations of a defective utility pole negligently maintained in a public way, its fall, resulting physical damage to an adjacent power line, interruption of service, and consequent destruction of a crop sufficiently pleaded duty, breach, and proximate causation to proceed past demurrer.


Newlin v. New Eng. Tel. & Tel. Co., 316 Mass. 234, 54 N.E.2d 929 (Mass. 1944)