Court Opinion

ID: 9541607
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:27:04.86231+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:04:04.381502
License: Public Domain

CRAVEN, J., dissenting: The only issue presented by this record is one of fact for the jury. The record establishes that the plaintiffs were injured, were free of contributory negligence, and that Jones and Zehr were both negligent. Jones, by his initiating negligence, set the stage for the subsequent events resulting in the plaintiffs’ injuries. A properly instructed jury, after a trial remarkably free of error, found both Jones and Zehr guilty of the negligence charged. The verdict was for damages not claimed to be excessive, and the judgment entered upon that verdict should be affirmed. The majority opinion, by deciding this case as a matter of law on the question of proximate cause, invades the exclusive domain of the jury. Proximate cause is a question of law only when all reasonable minds agree as to an interpretation of a set of facts. (65 CJS Negligence § 264.) The intervening force in this case is the negligence of Zehr. The majority opinion, by its holding, determines his negligence to be the sole cause of the injuries. Implicit in so holding is a determination, as a matter of law, that Jones’ negligence was not a substantial factor nor its consequences reasonably foreseeable with reference to plaintiffs’ injuries. In Restatement, Second, Torts, § 443, at p 472, we find: “The intervention of a force which is a normal consequence of a situation created by the actor’s negligent conduct is not a superseding cause of harm which such conduct has been a substantial factor in bringing about.” and at p 499, § 435 in the same work, the following: “. . . If the actor’s conduct is a substantial factor in bringing about harm to another, the fact that the actor neither foresaw nor should have foreseen the extent of the harm or the manner in which it occurred does not prevent him from being liable.. “. . . The actor’s conduct may be held not to be a legal cause of harm to another where after the event and looking back from the harm to the actor’s negligent conduct, it appears to the court highly extraordinary that it should have brought about the harm.” Ney v. Yellow Cab Co., 2 Ill2d 74, 117 NE2d 74, holds that a jury is entitled to determine proximate cause when one who has stolen a car causes injuries while in flight. The defendant owner of the car, by leaving the keys in the ignition, does not become insulated from liability by an intervening criminal act. Such intervening criminal act certainly was no more foreseeable than the negligence of Zehr on the facts in this case. Kacena v. George W. Bowers Co., 63 Ill App2d 27, 211 NE2d 563, goes a step beyond Ney. There the thief traded the stolen car to a fourteen-year-old boy for a bottle of whiskey. In driving the car, the fourteen-year-old boy injured the plaintiff. The defendant owner was not insulated by the intervening theft of the car nor its barter by the thief to a driver who injured the plaintiff. The case with which we are now dealing on its facts involves a chain of events infinitely more foreseeable than those in Kacena. The opinion in Kacena characterized the facts as “unique.” So they are—yet a jury could and did find, as a matter of fact, that the injuries of the plaintiff there were foreseeable. In Belcher v. Citizens Coach Co., 327 Ill App 618, 64 NE2d 747, it was held that the blocking of a street by parked busses could constitute negligence and proximate cause of a collision even though negligence—even wilful and wanton misconduct—of a third party intervened in the chain of events leading to the injury. There, as here, the initiating negligence was in repose. Even so the bus company was held liable for its negligence. “. . . the jury has a right to determine as a question of fact what was the proximate cause of the collision under a state of facts such as we find in the instant case. . . .” Those words of the court in Belcher apply here. The judgment of the circuit court of Champaign County should be affirmed.