Opinion ID: 2615017
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: the erroneous supervening cause instruction requires the judgment's reversal

Text: It is error for a court to treat a controverted fact as a question of law and withhold the issue from the jury, as the trial court did with foreseeability. [56] The test to be used when reviewing an instruction improperly given is whether there is a probability that it misled the jurors and caused them to reach a result different from that which they would have reached but for the flawed jury charge. [57] Both the parents' claim for the child's wrongful death and the doctors' supervening cause defense present complex issues. We have no doubt that the jury was confused by the oversimplified instruction  especially by the ambiguous phrase elected to become pregnant. The challenged instruction did not require the jury to find that (1) the mother engaged in sexual conduct intended to bring about conception in the face of a known and appreciated danger to herself and the child or acted in reckless disregard of her own and the child's well-being, (2) her behavior was unforeseeable to the doctors and (3) she took charge of the situation, unleashing an independent force that was adequate of itself to bring about the child's injury and death. The challenged jury charge cannot pass muster; the death case was undoubtedly prejudiced by the flawed instruction. A new trial is clearly the parents' due.