Court Opinion

ID: 9445921
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:41:10.535179+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:27.164171
License: Public Domain

FAIIY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I would affirm.
Proximate cause in the insurance field has been variously defined. It has been said that proximate cause referred to “the cause nearest to the loss.” Again, courts have properly stated that proximate cause “does not necessarily refer to the cause nearest in point of time to the loss. But the true meaning of that maxim is, that it refers to that cause which is most nearly and essentially connected with the loss as its efficient cause.”
Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 340 U.S. 54, 58, 71 S.Ct. 135, 137, 95 L.Ed. 68.
In this case the District Court found that appellee advanced the $4,000, which he lost, in reliance upon the interim binder policy. The court also concluded that the proximate cause of the loss was the failure of appellant to set forth the title defect in the interim binder policy and the failure of the Public Service *938Title Company, Inc., to discharge existing outstanding liens on the properties. These and other relevant findings and conclusions I think are not clearly erroneous; that is to say, we should not hold that these factual conclusions of the trial judge are erroneous as matter of law. I think he was well within his competence in finding on the evidence that the payment made by appellee in reliance upon the mistaken representation in the interim binder policy was, in the language of the Supreme Court, the cause “most nearly and essentially connected with the loss as its efficient cause.” This is so even though the foreclosure held by the majority as the proximate cause was, in point of time, “nearest to the loss.” Cf. American Insurance Co. of City of Newark v. Keane, 98 U.S.App.D.C. 152, 233 F.2d 354, 360.