Opinion ID: 1807253
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: foreseeability and intervening causes

Text: The general rule  that an intervening, independent and efficient cause severs whatever connection there may be between the plaintiff's injuries and the defendant's negligence ( Fowles v. Briggs [1898], 116 Mich 425; 38 Am Jur, Negligence, § 68, p 724 et seq. )  is not controlling if the intervening act was reasonably foreseeable. [5] 38 Am Jur, Negligence, § 70, p 726 et seq., Skinn v. Reutter (1903), 135 Mich 57 and also Comstock v. General Motors Corporation (1959), 358 Mich 163 where we quoted with approval 2 Restatement Torts, § 447, p 1196: The fact that an intervening act of a third person is negligent in itself or is done in a negligent manner does not make it a superseding cause of harm to another which the actor's negligent conduct is a substantial factor in bringing about, if (a) the actor at the time of his negligent conduct should have realized that a third person might so act, or (b) a reasonable man knowing the situation existing when the act of the third person was done would not regard it as highly extraordinary that the third person had so acted. We have already discussed, above, the conditions prompting the passage of the city ordinance,  it was intended to prevent, first, the meddlers and, second, the consequences of their meddling [6]  one of which consequences is the threat to life and property posed by a fleeing thief or joyriding youth. [7] We therefore hold that reasonable men might have concluded that leaving the keys in the ignition under these circumstances was not too remote a cause of the plaintiff's injuries and that the joyrider's intervention did not sever that causal connection. Under the totality of these circumstances [8] we hold it was improper for the trial judge to have granted summary judgment. Reversed and remanded for trial.