This unusual reaction may be deemed an extraordinary intervening cause that relieves the defendant of liability. Petrol's negligence is an intervening cause which gets Flameout off the liability hook. These jurisdictions simply ask whether the intervening cause is sufficient to relieve a defendant of liability. Dr. Lattanzi received his J.D. Change the example so that Henry pulls out a knife and chases Mary out of the garage. In Cohen, Jeanette Cohen sued Joseph Petty for permanent injuries she suffered as a passenger in a vehicle when Petty drove it into an embankment. The judge or jury asks whether a reasonable person would have anticipated a tornado. If you need help with your personal injury or wrongful death case, contact the wrongful death attorney for help. The result is that the person who started the chain of events is no longer responsible and will not be found liable for damages to the injured person. In Albertson v. State, 191 Wn.App. Negligence—Risk—Misconduct—Proximate Cause, WPI 15.05 Proximate Cause—Supserseding Cause. The Legal Standard – in a Nutshell The defense of superseding intervening cause is a defense that uses negligence principles. In Christen v. Lee, 113 Wn.2d 479, 491, 780 P.2d 1307 (1989), the court held that a criminal assault may be a foreseeable result of furnishing intoxicating liquor to an obviously intoxicated person, but only if the drinking establishment that furnished the intoxicating liquor had some notice of the possibility of harm from prior actions of the person causing the injury, either on the occasion of the injury or on previous occasions. Accord Cox v. Keg Restaurants U.S., Inc., 86 Wn.App. A court order prohibiting a father's contact with his child may be an intervening cause breaking the chain from a negligent CPS investigation only if all the material information was presented to the court that issued the order. The court must determine whether the employee was acting unreasonably when the event occurred. at 530 n.2. Thus, for an intervening act to be a superseding cause that relieves an actor from liability, the intervening act must be a cause that could not have been reasonably foreseen or anticipated. Petty had had no reason to anticipate the illness, and because he had not been negligent in any way prior to the accident, the illness relieved him of all liability for Cohen's injuries. https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Superseding+intervening+cause, Again, the court was convinced that this was proof positive that a, (18) Every one of these considerations militates against treating an employer's personnel investigation for discipline as a, Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus - The Free Dictionary, the webmaster's page for free fun content, Comparative fault as a defense in products liability subrogation, Needle stick suit: judgment for RN & employer upheld, Defeat the 'cat's paw' defense to vicarious liability: employers are seeking to avoid subordinate-bias liability for employment discrimination by claiming that the chain of causation was broken by an unbiased final decision-maker. © 2019 Thomson Reuters. Adamson v. Traylor, 60 Wn.2d 332, 339–340, 373 P.2d 961 (1962); Qualls v. Golden Arrow Farms, 47 Wn.2d 599, 602, 288 P.2d 1090 (1955). If the independent intervening cause, force or act is not reasonably foreseeable, it is deemed to supersede the defendant's original negligence; the defendant's original negligenceceases to be the proximate cause. If the original negligence of a defendant is followed by an unforeseeable independent intervening cause, force, or act of a third person (not a party to the case) that is the proximate cause of an injury or event, the chain of proximate causation is broken. According to the appeals court, the sudden illness was an intervening cause. 2000. Civil and criminal defendants alike may invoke the intervening cause doctrine to escape liability for their actions. Cohen v. Petty, 62 App. See … Petty's wife, Theresa Petty, who was sitting in the front passenger's seat, testified that just before the accident, Petty said, "Oh, Tree, I feel sick." This conclusion has important implications for the law of proximate cause. However, just as the county fire department has the fire nearly contained, Peter Petrol drives his oil truck through the fireline against a fire fighter's orders and stops on the road between Flameout's property and Richard Rancher's. For example, suppose the defendant poked an associate in the chest during a friendly discussion around a watercooler, and the associate subsequently jumped out a window. "Intervening-Cause Defense: Is It Still Viable Under Comparative Fault?" 516, 521, 870 P.2d 999 (1994). New Mexico Law Review 30 (spring): 325–49. Loehr, Cynthia. Available under Creative Commons-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 934, 942, 894 P.2d 1366 (1995). A superseding cause, also known as an “intervening cause,” may be proven to have substantially caused the accident. 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