Proximate Cause: Intervening Cause Notes

Proximate Cause: Intervening Cause

What is an Intervening Cause?

• In the proximate cause framework, there are 8 main categories: 4 with intervening cause and 4 without.
• Definition of Intervening Cause (Grady's Framework): An act of wrongdoing (negligence or intentional tort) by someone other than the defendant, occurring later in time than the defendant’s negligence.
  • Two key elements:
    1. Wrongdoing: Includes negligent acts of a third party (e.g., distracted driving) or intentional torts of a third party (e.g., arson).
    2. Timing: The cause must come into operation after the defendant's negligence. Conduct at the same time or before is not intervening.
• Intervening cause analysis focuses on the defendant, not the third party. Establish a timeline starting with the earliest conduct (defendant's negligence or third party's act) and ending with the plaintiff's harm.
• The third party can also be separately liable - do not lose track of who is being sued.
• The elements technically define an intervening cause under Grady’s framework, a richer and more helpful way to apply Grady’s definition of intervening cause is to try to fit a case into one of five scenarios:
  1. No person, animal, or natural event acted between the defendant’s negligence and the plaintiff’s harm.
  2. Someone other than the defendant acted before the defendant’s negligence but the act was not at least negligent.
  3. Someone other than the defendant acted after the defendant’s negligence but the act was not at least negligent.
  4. Someone other than the defendant acted negligently but the act came before the defendant’s negligence.
  5. Someone other than the defendant acted negligently and the act came after the defendant’s negligence.
• Under Grady’s definition of intervening cause, only #5 classifies as an intervening cause.

Examples to drive home Grady’s definition:

• Scott v. Shepherd:
  • The defendant threw a firecracker into a crowd and it was thrown around until it exploded near the plaintiff, injuring them.
• Tieder v. Little:
  • A student's car had a dead battery on the University of Miami campus.
  • Students attempted to clutch-start the car (a method to start a manual car with a dead battery by pushing it and releasing the clutch in first gear).
  • Clutch-starting a car without the engine running results in loss of power steering and power brakes, making it extremely hard to steer or brake.
  • The student lost control, jumped the curb, and traveled 33 feet across the lawn, crashing into a walkway and pinning the plaintiff against a brick wall.
  • The wall was negligently designed and constructed without adequate support and collapsed, killing the plaintiff.
  • The plaintiff's family sues the students.
• Revisiting Tieder v. Little:
  • Same facts as above, but now the plaintiff sues the University of Miami.

Foreseeability with Intervening Cause

• If there is an intervening cause, cases fall into four categories. The plaintiff would like to argue that the facts fit into a category where there is usually liability, and the defendant will want to argue the opposite.

Dependent Compliance Error (DCE)

• The defendant’s negligence puts the plaintiff at higher risk of being the victim of someone else’s compliance error. Compliance error refers to the negligence of a third party dependent on the defendant’s negligence. If the third party’s negligence is unrelated, this is not the relevant category.
  • Two main scenarios:
    1. The reason why the defendant’s conduct is considered negligent in the first place is that it puts the plaintiff at a higher risk of being a victim of negligence
    2. During an emergency response, including if medical malpractice occurs when treating the injury the defendant caused.
  • The category is less likely to be the right one as the third party’s negligence increases, such as extreme medical malpractice like amputating the wrong leg.
• Rule: There is proximate cause (plaintiffs argue for this category).
• Example: Village of Carterville v. Cook:
  • The city (defendant) owned an elevated sidewalk with a 6-foot cliff on one side and no railing.
  • A third party unintentionally bumped the plaintiff, who fell off the cliff and was injured.
  • The plaintiff sues the city.
  • The reason they are negligent is the increased probability of someone falling off the sidewalk.
  • Another person bumping the plaintiff here is a compliance error on the part of the third party because even the third party would agree that we need to walk carefully and not bump into other people. Whether the plaintiff’s injury is caused by the compliance error here depends directly on the negligence of the defendant in not having a railing. This therefore fits cleanly into the DCE category, where the reason why the defendant’s conduct is considered negligent in the first place is because it puts the plaintiff at higher risk of being a victim of negligence.

Encourage Free Radicals (EFR)

• The defendant’s negligence created an unusually tempting opportunity for irresponsible third parties to do harm to the plaintiff. The “free radical” refers to the irresponsible third parties.
• Rule: There is proximate cause (plaintiffs argue for this category).
• Requirements:
  1. The defendant must create a particularly tempting opportunity for mischief. Most likely met when the defendant acted deliberately in a way that led harm by a third party to be expected.
     • Example (Brauer v. N.Y. Central & H.R. R. Co. hypo): The defendant's negligence caused an outdoor fruit vendor to be knocked unconscious. Thieves steal the unguarded fruit. This is a tempting opportunity because valuable goods are not usually out in the open without protection. fore, it was foreseeable that the defendant’s negligence would increase the probability of the fruit being stolen
     • Example (Opportunity not tempting enough): The defendant’s negligence causes the plaintiff to stay in the hospital overnight. Thieves see the plaintiff’s house unattended and break in to steal a TV. The case would not fit within the EFR category because unattended houses are relatively easy to find and are otherwise unrelated to the defendant’s negligence in the case.
  2. The third party’s behavior cannot go beyond the encouragement from the defendant’s negligence.
     • Example (behavior not going beyond encouragement): The fruit vendor hypo from Brauer where the stealing of the goods was foreseeable given the defendant’s negligence caused the vendor to become unconscious.
     • Example (going beyond encouragement): The defendant owned a train which negligently derails. A third party enters the train and murders a passenger. Tencouragement here could be related to giving a third party an opportunity to take advantage of the passengers who are stuck on a derailed train, but it seems unlikely that a parked train gave a murderer a particularly tempting opportunity to murder the passenger. The murder could have just as easily taken place at a train stop or any public place. What we are worried about seems unrelated to what happened in the example

No Corrective Precaution (NCP)

• The defendant’s negligence was followed by a specific type of person who recognized a risk but willfully failed to take corrective precaution to prevent the defendant’s negligence from causing harm.
  • Specific type of person is limited to:
    1. The plaintiff
    2. Someone else with a duty to the plaintiff.
  • Not covered yet: an important requirement in NCP cases is that the responsible third party had a duty to act. , we usually do not have a duty to a stranger. We will return to this proximate cause issue when we get to duty.
  • Classic example: A defendant negligently lost their firearm, and a child found it. The child’s parents, who have a duty to protect their children, noticed the child had a gun. If the parents do not take the gun away from the child and the child is hurt by the gun, this would fit into the NCP category of cases and cut off liability to the gun owner.
• Fact Pattern:
  1. The defendant negligently created a dangerous situation.
  2. There was a responsible third party who has a duty to act to prevent harm and who recognized the danger caused by the defendant.
  3. This responsible third party recklessly does nothing to address the risk.
• Rule: There is no proximate cause (defendants argue for this category).

Independent Intervening Tort (IIT)

• A third party committed an intervening wrong that was independent of the defendant’s negligence.
  • A common pattern is where the defendant’s negligence and the third party’s negligence were merely coincidental.
  • Similar to “wrong place at the wrong time” without an intervening cause. In IIT cases, the harm was caused by a third party’s tortious conduct.
• Rule: There is no proximate cause (defendants argue for this category).
• Example: Central of Georgia Ry. v. Price:
  • The defendant's train negligently took the plaintiff to the wrong stop, requiring the plaintiff to stay overnight in one hotel instead of another hotel.
  • That night, the hotel negligently started a fire, injuring the plaintiff.
  • The plaintiff sues the train company for the harm caused by the hotel fire.
  • The defendant’s negligence here is independent of the harm caused by the hotel’s negligence. The passenger staying in a different hotel did not increase the probability that they would be harmed from a negligently started hotel fire. In fact, it was equally likely that staying in a different hotel actually prevented the passenger from being harmed by a hotel fire. Thus, the “intervening tort” (the hotel’s negligence) was “independent” of the railroad’s negligence, hence the name of this category of cases – Independent Intervening Tort.

Applications

• Pridham v. Cash and Carry Building Center:
  • The defendant's employees negligently untied a rope and a panel fell onto the plaintiff.
  • The plaintiff could not move his legs, so the plaintiff was put in ambulance to go to the hospital.
  • On the way to the hospital, the ambulance driver had a heart attack and crashed into a tree, killing the plaintiff.
  • The plaintiff's family sued the owner of the showroom for the plaintiff's death (not just the injuries from the panel falling).
• Thompson v. White:
  • A gas station hired clowns to wave signs on the side of the road, within touching distance of cars.
  • The plaintiff drove by the clowns, followed by a third party.
  • The clowns distracted the third party, who rear-ended the plaintiff.
  • The plaintiff sued the gas station for the damage caused by the third party, claiming the clowns were a negligent distraction.
  • Assume that the gas station was negligent for having the clowns.
• Wagon Mound:
  • In 1951, the ship Wagon Mound docked in Sydney, Australia, needing a heating oil refill.
  • The ship needed a refill of its heating oil. There were multiple hatches to the container holding the oil that opened the tank to the outside, and a second hatch was accidentally left open as the tank was being refilled. This meant that as the tank was being filled at one end, the oil was seeping out the other end.
  • Workers noticed oil leaking into the harbor while refilling.
  • Nearby welders stopped welding upon noticing the oil.
  • The next day, the Wagon Mound left without cleaning the oil.
  • The welders learned that the oil required significant heat to ignite and resumed welding.
  • Welding caused a rag in oil to catch fire, igniting the oil and destroying two boats: one owned by the welders and another by an innocent neighbor.
  • Wagon Mound Case #1: The welder who started the fire sued
  • Wagon Mound Case #2: The innocent neighbor sued.
• DiPonzio v. Riordan:
  • The plaintiff is filling up their car at defendant's gas station
  • Another patron of the store left their unoccupied car running while they went in the store. The gas station had a policy requiring the attendant to ask patrons to turn off their running vehicle after they were parked to get gas and out of their car.
  • The attendant did not enforce a policy for the patron to turn off the engine, and the unoccupied car slipped out of park and ran into the plaintiff.
  • Assume that if the defendant enforced its policy, the plaintiff would not have been hurt.
  • The plaintiff sues the gas station for the injury from the other patrons car running into them.
• Home Office v. Dorset Yacht Co.:
  • Seven juvenile offenders were sentenced to boot camp training on an island.
  • Five of the kids had previously escaped from the boot camp.
  • Three guards were employed to watch the kids but went to sleep one night.
  • The boys stole an unattended yacht anchored offshore and crashed it into the plaintiff's yacht.
  • The plaintiff sued the defendant (the boot camp operator).