Dallas County v. Commercial Union Assurance Co

Facts

The clock tower at the Dallas County Courthouse in Alabama fell into the courtroom one Sunday morning in 1957; because it was a Sunday, nobody was hurt, but the courthouse nonetheless suffered over $100,000.00 in damages from the tower’s collapse. Appellee was the insurer of the courthouse, and a disagreement arose concerning the cause of the accident and the corresponding liability of Appellee. At trial, Appellant called the State Toxicologist, who testified that lightning had previously struck the courthouse, and that the lightning strike was the cause of the collapse. Supporting that theory, residents of the town testified that lighting had struck the courthouse five days earlier. Appellee, however, concluded that the courthouse collapsed of its own weight, and disputed that the courthouse had been struck by lightning. Instead, Appellee contended that lightning could not have possibly collapsed the tower, and that instead it was structural weaknesses that were the result of faulty design and poor construction that were responsible. Appellee also asserted that a fire had to have occurred long before the date Appellant cites as the day of the lightning strike. Appellee introduced, at trial, a copy of the Morning Times of Selma newspaper from June 9, 1901; in it, there was an article stating that a fire occurred during the courthouse’s construction in 1901 and that this construction-phase fire had caused damage to the clock tower, resulting in its collapse 56 years later.