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

Heading: foreseeability and negligence

Text: Foreseeability of any harm is one of the factors a jury may consider in determining if the defendant acted reasonably under all the circumstances. Such determination can best be made by considering only those facts existing up to the time of the injury  should the defendant have reasonably foreseen that what he was doing or had done up to then might cause harm  if so, he was negligent. The jury must then bridge the gap between the plaintiff's injuries and the defendant's negligence. This is the determination of cause and the remoteness of the effect. Once negligence is determined, foreseeability of harm should no longer be considered. Causation is a process of logical determination, while the significance of the connections  remoteness  is a policy determination. It appears that the modern trend of judicial opinion is in favor of eliminating foreseeable consequences as a test of proximate cause, except where an independent, responsible, intervening cause is involved. The view is that once it is determined that a defendant was negligent, he is to be held responsible for injurious consequences of his negligent act or omission which occur naturally and directly, without reference to whether he anticipated, or reasonably might have foreseen such consequences. Apparent inconsistencies between this view and the language of former decisions has been explained on the ground that while in many instances the decisions have spoken of foreseen or foreseeable consequences as a test of proximate cause, what the court really had in mind was liability for negligence without differentiating between the original question of whether there was a breach of duty to use due care and the question of proximate cause. Logically, the question of liability is always anterior to the question of the measure of the consequences that go with liability, and where there is no tort there is no question of remote or proximate cause. On the question of what is negligence, it is material to consider the consequences that a prudent man might reasonably have anticipated; but when negligence is once established, that consideration is wholly immaterial on the question of how far it imposes liability. There is no need for discussing proximate cause in a case where the negligence of the defendant is not established, but when his negligence has been established, the proximate result and amount of recovery depend upon the evidence of direct sequences, and not upon defendant's foresight. 38 Am Jur, Negligence, §§ 58, 709, 710. (Emphasis added.) The determination of remoteness, however, should seldom, if ever, be summarily determined. Selleck v. Lake Shore & M.S.R. Co. (1892), 93 Mich 375; Harding v. Blankenship (1936), 274 Mich 118; Comstock v. General Motors Corporation (1959), 358 Mich 163. Both the determination of remoteness and of negligence should almost always be left to the jury. `As to both, they present, from their very nature, a question, not of law, but of fact, depending on the peculiar circumstances of each case, which circumstances are only evidential of the principal fact  that of negligence or its effects  and are to be compared and weighed by the jury, the tribunal whose province it is to find facts, not by any artificial rules, but by the ordinary principles of reasoning; and such principal fact must be found by them, before the court can take cognizance of it, and pronounce upon its legal effect.' Detroit & M.R. Co. v. Van Steinberg, supra, at 122. In analyzing the causation issue in this case we have to consider the problem of the intervening joyriders and the remoteness of the injuries from the keys left in the car.