Opinion ID: 2114062
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Proximate-Cause Issue.

Text: The defendant's motion for summary judgment did not allege the lack of material fact on proximate cause, but the court found as a matter of law that proximate cause could not be established because the intruder's action was a superseding cause. We address this issue, even though it was not raised in the motion for summary judgment, because it will likely arise at trial. The general rule is that [i]f the likelihood that a third person may act in a particular manner is the hazard or one of the hazards which makes the actor negligent, such an act whether innocent, negligent, intentionally tortious, or criminal does not prevent the actor from being liable for harm caused thereby. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 449, at 482. Further, [t]he happening of the very event the likelihood of which makes the actor's conduct negligent and so subjects the actor to liability cannot relieve him from liability. The duty to refrain from the act committed or to do the act omitted is imposed to protect the other from this very danger. To deny recovery because the other's exposure to the very risk from which it was the purpose of the duty to protect him resulted in harm to him, would be to deprive the other of all protection and to make the duty a nullity. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 449 cmt. b, at 483. In the present case, the plaintiff's claim is that the violent acts of the intruder were reasonably foreseeable. In such case, [o]bviously the defendant cannot be relieved from liability by the fact that the risk, or a substantial or important part of the risk, to which the defendant has subjected the plaintiff has indeed come to pass. Foreseeable intervening forces are within the scope of the original risk, and hence of the defendant's negligence. The courts are quite generally agreed that intervening causes which fall fairly in this category will not supersede the defendant's responsibility. Prosser & Keeton § 44, at 303-04 (footnote omitted). In Stevens v. Des Moines Independent School District, 528 N.W.2d 117 (Iowa 1995), a middle school student sued the school for failing to protect him from injury by another student. We held that the willful act of the aggressor could not be considered a superseding cause under the rule just discussed. Id. at 120. We conclude the district court erred in finding a superseding cause of injury as a matter of law.