Opinion ID: 2223970
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Instructions on Causation.

Text: The second paragraph of Wis J ICivil, Part II, 1500, on cause, reads: There may be more than one cause of a collision. The negligence of one person alone might produce it, or the acts or omissions of two or more persons might jointly produce it. Before such relationship of cause and effect can be found to exist, however, it must appear that the negligence under consideration was a substantial factor in producing the collision, that is to say, that it was a factor actually operating and which had substantial effect in producing the collision as a natural result. (Italics supplied.) The trial court gave this instruction practically verbatim with two exceptions. These two changes occurred after the last comma in the last sentence. The first of these was to insert the word some immediately preceding the words substantial effect. The other was to omit the four italicized words as a natural result. Plaintiff contends that each of the two changes constituted error. We find such contention devoid of merit. We can perceive no essential difference in meaning between some substantial effect and substantial effect, especially in view of the context in which the first stated phrase was used in the instant instructions. If a negligent act had some substantial effect in producing a collision it necessarily constituted a cause of the collision. The omission of the words as a natural result far from being error are in our view an improvement in the model instruction. In Pfeifer v. Standard Gateway Theater, Inc., [5] this court held that while foreseeability is an element of negligence it has no place in the determination of whether an act found to be negligent is the proximate or legal cause of injury or damage sustained by a person other than the actor. In referring to the trial court's instructions it was stated: It was also error to charge the jury in the instant case that proximate cause is one which 'produces the injury as a natural and probable result' of defendant's negligence. The use of the term 'probable result ' carries with it a connotation of foreseeability [which] was distinctly disapproved in the decision in Osborne v. Montgomery [ (1931), 203 Wis. 223, 234 N. W. 372] . . . . [6] Professor Richard V. Campbell in his article, Recent Developments of the Law of Negligence in Wisconsin, [7] in discussing the Pfeifer decision, supra, states: [ Before Pfeifer ] . . . statements in the instructions of the trial judge on `foreseeability' and `natural and probable' results were commonplace. Under the Pfeifer case a complete reversal has taken place. It is not only un necessary to use these phrases in submitting proximate cause, but it is prejudicial error. This brings the law in action and the law in words together. (Emphasis supplied.) [8] While natural result does not imply foreseeability to the degree that probable result does, nevertheless, it may have such a connotation in the minds of some people. For this reason we deem it objectionable though not necessarily prejudicially erroneous. We commend the learned trial judge for omitting the words as a natural result from the causation instruction given. By the Court. Judgment reversed, and cause remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.