Opinion ID: 1160343
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: act of god defense

Text: More than sixty years ago, the Supreme Court of Kansas defined act of God as an: irresistible superhuman cause such as no ordinary or reasonable human foresight, prudence, diligence, and care could have anticipated and prevented. [61] In order for an act of God to preclude liability in negligence, two elements must be present: the occurrence alleged to be an act of God must be such that it was incapable of being avoided by reasonable care or foreseen by reasonable prudence; and the resultant injury must have come about without the intervention of any human agency. [62] In the instant case, Skyways presented evidence that weather was the cause of the crash. Plaintiffs requested the following instruction: The defendant in this case relies on the defense of an act of God. In such a defense, the defendant must prove not only the existence of the act of God, but that the act was the sole proximate cause of damages about which plaintiff complains, and that he, the defendant, was free from concurrent negligent participation in the proximate cause. The defendant has the burden of proving such an affirmative defense by a preponderance of the evidence. The superior court denied the instruction, noting that it was unnecessary since the defense was not genuinely of a nature to be an affirmative defense and could come in under the general denial of negligence. The jury was told that they should find liability if they found the defendant to be negligent and if they further found that such negligence was a proximate cause of the crash. [63] The requested act of God instruction in substance stated the same thing in the negative. Essentially, under the requested instruction, the jury would have been told that the defendants were not liable: (1) if they were not negligent; or (2) if they were negligent, but such negligence was not a proximate cause of the injury. [64] The majority of this court finds no error in the refusal to give the requested instruction. [65] REVERSED AND REMANDED.