It

the view that under these circumstances recovery for the injury was not precluded as matter of law on the ground that the injured party was a trespasser, reaches a conclusion in accord with many other decisions in cases where the abutting property owner has been held liable to parties who strayed from the boundaries of the highway, the limits of which were not defined, and sustained injuries by falling into excavations or coming in contact with dangerous instrumentalities on the adjoining premises, which were apparently a part of the highway, or at least were open for travelers who chose to use the same. will be noted that the authorities quoted in the SEDITA CASE apparently support the view that, even though the traveler was aware of the technical line of the highway, he would not necessarily become a trespasser by passing across it, where the abutting owner has apparently thrown open to the public that part of his property covered by an extension of the public sidewalk or highway. In addition to the cases cited in the opinion in this case which support the views above indicated, attention may be called to the following among other cases, which illustrate the principle involved: Tomle v. Hampton (1889) 129 Ill. 379, 21 N. E. 800; Holmes v. Drew (1890) 151 Mass. 578, 25 N. E. 22; Sears v. Merrick (1899) 175 Mass. 25, 55 N. E. 476, 7 Am. Neg. Rep. 58; Beck v. Carter (1877) 68 N. Y. 283, 23 Am. Rep. 175; Bush v. Johnston (1854) 23 Pa. 209; Rachmel v. Clark (1903) 205 Pa. 314, 62 L.R.A. 959, 54 Atl. 1027, 14 Am. Neg. Rep. 208.

The abutting landowner must use ordinary care and prudence to render the premises reasonably safe, under the above circumstances. See Holmes v. Drew (1890) 151 Mass. 578, 25 N. E. 22, supra. And, if a space inside the building line is permitted by the abutting owner to remain open and to be used as part of the sidewalk, he must exercise due care not to place there dangerous obstructions which may result in injury to children lawfully on the walk, including children who may be attracted to and may en

ter upon the premises. Rachmel v. Clark (Pa.) supra. And, if the adjoining property owner connects a part of his own premises with a public sidewalk, he thereby invites the public to treat the part so connected as belonging to the sidewalk, and cannot be heard to say that the whole is not a public way. Tomle v. Hampton (Ill.) supra.

III. Proximate cause.

(Supplementing annotation in 43 A.L.R. 442 et seq.)

In an action for the death of an eight-year-old boy who was burned through the ignition of blasting powder with which he was playing, the court, in Eastern Carbon Black Co. v. Stephens (1926) Ky., 287 S. W. 215, held that the defendant, which had placed partially filled cans of the powder in an outbuilding on its premises, on a shelf 7 feet from the floor, where it was found by the boy, who had been frequently warned and punished for playing on the premises, need not, in the exercise of reasonable care, have anticipated that a child would discover the powder, would devise means of climbing to the storage place, remove and uncap the container, carry away a portion of the powder, and be burned while throwing it in a fire.

See also Beickert v. G. M. Laboratories (N. Y.) under IV. e, infra, where a boy was injured by picking up scraps of motion-picture film, which he caried away and ignited; and it was held that the defendant, in dumping pieces of film on a vacant lot adjacent to its plant for purposes of burning the same, was not obliged to anticipate that an unburned piece might be thus secured, carried away, and ignited.

In other cases, however, the circumstances have been such that the courts have held that the defendant's negligence was the proximate cause of the injury, or at least that the jury might so find.

Thus, in an action for injury to a ten-year-old boy, who, as he was passing along a sidewalk with playmates, stopped to investigate a box contain

ing dynamite caps negligently left by the defendant town about 3 feet from the walk, and in plain view therefrom, took one of the caps and exploded it by applying a lighted match, to his injury, the court in Depew v. Kilgore (1926) 117 Okla. 263, 246 Pac. 606, in affirming a judgment for the plaintiff, held that the chain of causation was not broken, as matter of law, so as to prevent the original negligence of the town through its street commissioner, from being the proximate cause of the injury, merely because of the act of another boy seventeen years of age, who directed the plaintiff to apply a match to the cap. The court said that the rule of law applicable to such a situation is that, where the defendant is guilty of original negligence, and, from the evidence, the inference may be reasonably drawn that the original negligence placed in motion the intervening act which was the immediate cause of the injury, but that such injury would not have happened if it had not been for the original negligence, the defendant will be held liable; that this was a question for the jury, which evidently concluded that the original negligence of the defendant, in placing the dynamite caps in the exposed position, so that the plaintiff came into contact therewith and procured possession of one of the caps, was the occasion of, or put in motion, the independent act of the older boy in directing the plaintiff to apply a lighted match to the cap.

And, in Butrick v. Snyder (1926) Mich., 210 N. W. 311, it was held that negligence of a road contractor, in leaving in an unlocked shed in a vacant lot, near a schoolhouse, dynamite caps used by it in its work, was the proximate cause of injury to a schoolboy, who, with the teacher's consent, went upon the lot, which was a natural playground for the children attending the school, found one of the caps, and was injured by its explosion when he attempted to light it with a match. The court, in affirming a judgment for the plaintiff for the injury, said that the proximity of the school, and the probability that the lot would be used as a playground for the chil

dren, were facts apparent to the defendant's employees; that whether a reasonably prudent person, with the knowledge of the conditions surrounding the building and the use which the school children would probably make of this unfenced and unoccupied land, should have anticipated the danger incident to leaving the caps as they were in the shed, was a question for the jury; that, if the finding were that he should, then the defendant owed to the plaintiff and other children who might be about the shed the duty to remove this dangerous explosive, or to safeguard its use in a reasonable way; and that the neglect of its employees in this respect was the proximate cause of the injury.

It was held, also, in Butrick v. Snyder (Mich.) supra, that the act of another boy eleven years of age who accompanied the plaintiff to the shed, and who reached and took two of the caps (which were beyond the plaintiff's reach), and gave one of them to the plaintiff, which injured him, was not as matter of law an intervening cause which would relieve the defendant from liability, the court saying that the older boy had no appreciating sense of the dangerous nature of the caps, and his act in handing one to the plaintiff should have been anticipated, and was not such an intervention as to destroy the causal connection between the wrongful act of the defendant's employees and the consequences which followed.

It was said in Serviss v. Cloud (1926) 121 Kan. 251, 246 Pac. 509, in affirming a judgment for damages for the death of a fourteen-year-old boy through the explosion of powder found by him in a stone quarry in a municipality and carried to his home, where the accident occurred while he was playing with the powder, that a person using explosives in a quarry in a large city, who leaves the explosives exposed in open cans without anything being done to prevent their being carried away by children, should anticipate that children might play in the quarry, might find the powder and carry some of it away, and might explode it to their injury.

streets, uses dynamite caps, and leaves them in an exposed position near the public school grounds and in close proximity to the sidewalk which is used by school children in going to and from school, and a tenyear-old boy, while walking along the sidewalk, observes the box containing the caps, takes one of them, and applies a lighted match, causing the same to explode, to the child's injury, the town is liable for damages. The questions involved were as to care and duty of the defendant (see II. supra); as to whether the defendant's negligence was the proximate cause of the injury (see III. c, supra); and as to the contributory negligence of the boy (see V. c, infra).

And, in an action for injury to a nine-year-old schoolboy through the explosion of a dynamite cap found by him in an unlocked shed on a vacant lot across the highway and about 600 feet distant from a schoolhouse, the cap having been placed there by the defendant while engaged in road-construction work, and the lot being used as a playground for school children, the court in Butrick v. Snyder (1926)

Mich., 210 N. W. 311, said that it could not be questioned that the employees of the defendant were negligent in leaving the caps where they were found by the schoolboys; and it was held that a judgment for the plaintiff, in an action for the injury, should be sustained.

And it was held, also, in Butrick v. Snyder (Mich.) supra, that a finding that the dynamite cap which caused the injury had been left in the shed by the defendant did not rest on conjecture, where there was evidence that the owner of the land did not use dynamite, that, shortly before the highway work was begun, he had removed the tools from the shed, at which time the caps were not there, that such caps were used in the road-construction work carried on by the defendant, whose employees occupied a tent near the shed, the quantity of caps furnished by the defendant not being shown, and it not appearing whether they were all used or what was done

with those not used. In other words, the conclusion that the cap which caused the injury had been left in this place by the defendant was justified as an inference from the above circumstances, there being no evidence that anyone else might have left the caps there. And, although the burden was on the plaintiff to prove that the caps were left in the place in question by the defendant's employees, it was held that he might establish such fact, if unable to do so by positive evidence thereof, by circumstantial proof of such a nature as would create a probability sufficiently strong to lead the jury to conclude that such was the fact.

It was held in Eves v. Littig Constr. Co. (1927) - Iowa, 212 N. W. 154, that the questions of proximate cause and negligence were for the jury, and that a judgment for the plaintiff should be sustained, in an action for injury to a boy about ten years old through an explosion of a dynamite cap from which he was attempting to remove the contents, where there was evidence that the defendant, a construction company, had not more than ten days previously completed its work on the highway at that point, in the performance of which it had used dynamite for blasting purposes; that no one else was known to have possessed explosives in the vicinity, except that several months previous another construction crew had used dynamite about 20 rods distant; and that the caps were found in a box on the top of an embankment about 12 beet above the surface of the highway, and in plain view of one passing along the top of the embankment.

And in an action for injury to an eight-year-old boy through an explosion of dynamite caps which he had found in the pocket of an automobile belonging to a contracting company and driven by its assistant manager, it was held in Sparks v. Maeschal (1926) 217 Ky. 235, 289 S. W. 308. that a peremptory instruction in favor of the defendants (the company and the driver of the car) was properly overruled, where it appeared that the boy had been invited by the driver to