Shell Oil Co. v. Slade

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge.

The complaint for death damages resulting from an automobile collision in a fog was in two counts. The first count charged negligence, the second maintenance of a nuisance. The gravamen of both counts was that: for a long period of time prior to the injury, defendant had permitted the discharge from its plant into an open drainage ditch and thence into a canal along the side of the highway of large quantities of very hot water with the result that in the cool of the evenings and early mornings they created dense and heavy, fogs immediately above the paved highway; and…