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128 Fla. 270

174 So 417

Ells v. Lewis

Supreme Court of Florida

Decided May 20, 1937

Supreme Court of Florida · decided 1937-05-20

Relies on King v. Weis-Patterson Lumber Co.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1937-05-20

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently February 2001

5 state decisions

2019371940195019601970198019902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Davis, J.

¶1 Ells, as receiver of the Apalachicola Northern ■Railroad Company, was mulched in damages for negligently communicating fire to the adjoining property of plaintiff from an engine attached to a loader or grader op *271 erated by the receiver ás part of the railroad in his judicial custody.

¶2 There is substantial circumstantial evidence which, if believed by the jury, meets the test of sufficiency approved by this court in the very late case of King v. Weis-Patterson Lumber Co., 124 Fla. 272, 168 Sou. Rep. 858, wherein it wa.s said that in civil cases an inference of an ultimate fact derived from circumstantial evidence is only required to outweigh all contrary inferences to such an extent as to amount to a. preponderance of all of the reasonable inferences that could be drawn from the same circumstances to prove the existence of the primary fact in issue. Therefore the defendant’s motion for a directed verdict and his motion for a new trial were not erroneously denied.

¶3 The procedural errors complained of have been considered but we perceive therein no cause for reversal on that score.

¶4 Affirmed.

Ellis, C. J., and Whitfield, Terrell and Buford, J. J., concur. Brown, J., dissents.
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