Note from Professor:

This case involves intervening forces and proximate cause. The court rules that as a matter of law that the plaintiff's injuries were not a foreseeable result of the defendant's actions. This means that the intervening force (the driver of the car that hit the plaintiff) would be the proximate cause of the harm and would be a superseding intervening cause. The dissent is also included to give you a different perspective of the case. As you read it, consider why the majority and dissent disagree over whether the harm was foreseeable.

This case has been edited by the professor. The full version can be viewed on Westlaw. Material reprinted from Westlaw with permission of Thomson Reuters.

Plaintiff rented an automobile from the defendant-appellant Kinney. There was trouble with the trunk lid, and despite return to the lessor for repair, the trunk lid did not close satisfactorily. As a result, the car was parked on Mott Street and the plaintiff and a passenger were attempting to slam the trunk lid shut, when the defendant Maldonado's car, parked several car-lengths behind them, jumped ahead severely injuring the plaintiff.

A lessee brought action against an automobile lessor and a motorist for injuries sustained when the defendant motorist's car jumped ahead, severely injuring the plaintiff, who was standing at the rear of his car. The Supreme Court, granted an award against the lessor and others … On cross appeals, the Court of Appeals held that it was reasonably foreseeable that negligence in providing an automobile with a defective trunk lid would result in plaintiff's repeated attempts to close the lid, but not that a second car would strike plaintiff while he was standing behind his parked automobile, and thus such negligence in providing a defective trunk lid was not the proximate cause of the injury to plaintiff.

Order of the Appellate Division affirmed, with costs. Proximate cause and foreseeability are relative terms, "nothing more than a convenient formula for disposing of the case" (Prosser, Law of Torts (4th ed.), s 43, p. 267). In writing of the "orbit of the duty", Chief Judge Cardozo said "(t)he range of reasonable apprehension is at times a question for the court, and at times, if varying inferences are possible, a question for the jury" (Palsgraf v. Long Is. R. R. Co., 248 N.Y. 339, 345, 162 N.E. 99, 101). So it is with proximate cause and foreseeability.

Although the negligence of the automobile renter, defendant Kinney, is manifest, and was, of course, a "cause" of the accident, it was not the proximate cause. "What we do mean by the word 'proximate' is, that because of convenience, of public policy, of a rough sense of justice, the law arbitrarily declines to trace a series of events beyond a certain point" ( Palsgraf v. Long Is. R. R. Co., 248 N.Y. 339, 352, 162 N.E. 99, 103, Supra (Andrews, J., dissenting)). The immediately effective cause of plaintiff's injuries was the negligence of Maldonado, the driver of the second car, in striking plaintiff while he was standing behind his parked automobile. That Kinney's negligence in providing an automobile with a defective trunk lid would result in plaintiff's repeated attempts to close the lid was reasonably foreseeable. Not "foreseeable", however, was the collision between vehicles both parked a brief interval before the accident. Plaintiff was standing in a relatively "safe" place, a parking space, not in an actively traveled lane. He might well have been there independent of any negligence of Kinney, as, for example, if he were loading or unloading the trunk. Under these circumstances, to hold the accident a foreseeable consequence of Kinney's negligence is to stretch the concept of foreseeability beyond acceptable limits.

FUCHSBERG, Judge (dissenting).

When Dean Prosser suggested that proximate cause may at times seem to be "nothing more than a convenient formula for disposing of the case", he also observed that the existence of proximate cause must " 'be determined on the facts of each case upon mixed considerations of logic, common sense, justice, policy and precedent' " (Prosser, Law of Torts (4th ed.), s 42, pp. 267, 249).

The generality of both these statements recognizes that torts is a branch of the law in which the decisional process is usually so dependent on the vagaries of particular facts in individual cases that it calls for a high degree of flexibility in judgment (see Pound, Introduction to the Philosophy of Law, 139). Thus, disputes as to whether conduct is negligent, contributorily negligent or the proximate cause of an injury are usually best left to the fact finder. Since the record here convinces me that this case fails well within the range of these cautions, I believe the Trial Judge did not err as a matter of law in leaving the issue of proximate cause to the jury.

Ample was the proof that, to the knowledge of the rental company, the trunk door on the automobile it furnished to the plaintiff had a penchant for flying open so as to obstruct the operator's view while awastmoving. Given those facts, it was not only foreseeable, but a most reasonable rather than a remote expectation, that a driver confronted by such an emergency would alight and promptly proceed to the rear of the car to attempt to secure the lid manually so that he might continue on his way without further danger to others and himself. The seemingly ineluctable consequence was to expose the driver to the danger of being struck by another vehicle while he was positioned behind the trunk. On these facts, it could readily be found, as the jury apparently did here, that the choice between the alternatives the danger from the obstruction of the driver's view from the vehicle and the danger of being struck while engaged in the act of removing the danger was thrust on the plaintiff by Kinney's negligence. Of course, whether in making the choice he did plaintiff himself was negligent similarly raised a factual issue within the province of the jury.

To be sure, at other times and for other reasons, the plaintiff may have had occasion to undergo similar risks while in a roadway on foot, but the fact remains that defendant's conduct increased the occasions for such risks: specifically, the one on which plaintiff was injured would not have transpired. …

All this is not to say that the jury had to find that there was a reasonable likelihood of danger resulting from the act of which plaintiff complains. It could have found that there was not. But, by its verdict it did in effect find that the accident that caused the plaintiff to lose his leg was at least in part the "ordinary and natural result" of the defendant's negligent act. And that it also had a right to do. (O'Neill v. City of Port Jervis, supra, p. 432, 171 N.E. p. 697.)

I therefore would vote to reverse the order of the Appellate Division and remit the case to it for the determination of any remaining questions.

This material was reprinted from Westlaw with permission of Thomson Reuters.