Court Opinion

ID: 9649199
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:44:42.028713+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:08.795205
License: Public Domain

KERN, Associate Judge,
dissenting:
I am unable to agree with the majority’s conclusion that “the substantial factor instruction, in the context of the entire jury charge, properly stated the law of the District of Columbia and does not constitute prejudicial error.” In my view, the trial court’s embellishment of the Standardized Jury Instruction on proximate cause with this specially tailored instruction confused the jurors to the grave prejudice of plaintiff-appellants.
The theory of appellants’ case was that appellees, who occupied various positions of responsibility at an elementary school, were negligent in protecting the minor child plaintiff who was a pupil at this school and was, as a result of their negligence, sexually assaulted by another school employee. (R. 54)
The defense advanced by appellees at trial was that there was no evidence presented by plaintiffs upon which appellees could have reasonably anticipated or foreseen a criminal assault upon the child by the school’s employee. Therefore, they contended that an intervening criminal act by another, not their negligence, was the cause of the minor child’s injury. (R. 650-52)
Appellees argued to the trial judge at the time he prepared his instruction to the jury that Standardized Jury Instruction No. 64, defining proximate cause,1 was not a good instruction “when there is an intervening *325criminal act” and “a fuller instruction . . . is more appropriate.” (R. 828) Despite appellants’ objections, the trial court, after giving Standardized Jury Instruction No. 64, defining proximate cause, and Instruction No. 65, that there might be concurring causes of an injury and “each of the participating acts ... is regarded ... as a proximate cause,” charged the jurors (R. 908):
However, in order to find the defendants liable for the sexual assaults on Brit-ta Lacy, you must first find that it was more likely than not that the conduct of the defendants were [sic] a substantial factor in the assaults. A mere possibility of such causation is not enough and if the probabilities are at best evenly balanced, you should find for the defendants.
This charge was in my view confusing because it in effect changed the burden of proof on appellants to prove that appellees’ negligence caused the injury suffered by the child from the normal standard, “by a preponderance of the evidence,” to something greater. The Arizona Supreme Court pointed out the prejudicial confusion a trial court creates by employing the term “substantial factor” in a jury charge on causation:
The use of the word “substantial” in a jury instruction is open to serious criticism in that it is a source of additional confusion injected into an already difficult area of law. Webster’s Third International Dictionary Unabridged, notes a number of varying meanings for the word “substantial” — among these it is defined as “not* * * imaginary, not illusive.” Were we certain that it would be understood in this sense, or in the sense of “insignificant”, a litigant would have little cause to complain. However, Webster also defines “substantial” as “abundant, plentiful” and “considerable in amount”, p. 2280. Commonly, we speak in terms of a substantial amount as in a substantial meal or a substantial income. If this meaning is attributed to the word, the instruction is palpably erroneous as inducing the concept of largeness as opposed to smallness. It is not how little or how large a cause is that makes it a legal cause, for a proximate cause is any cause which in a natural and continuous sequence produces the injury and without which the result would not have occurred. [McDowell v. Davis, 104 Ariz. 69, 71, 448 P.2d 869, 871 (1968) (en banc) (emphasis in original).]
I agree with this analysis.2
Accordingly, I would reverse the judgment on this ground and order a new trial.

. This Instruction is:
The proximate cause of an injury is that cause which, in natural and continuous sequence, unbroken by any efficient intervening cause, produces the injury, and without which the result would not have occurred. It is the efficient cause — the one that necessarily sets in operation the factors that accomplish the injury. It may operate directly or by putting intervening agencies in motion.
This definition of proximate cause was established for the District of Columbia in 1968. Dunn v. Marsh, 129 U.S.App.D.C. 245, 393 F.2d 354 (1968).

. Graham v. Roberts, 142 U.S.App.D.C. 305, 441 F.2d 995 (1979) and Daniels v. Hadley Memorial Hospital, 185 U.S.App.D.C. 84, 566 F.2d 749 (1975), cited by the majority as having “persuasively upheld the substantial factor test,” exemplify situations which were in marked contrast to the instant case. In Daniels, the trial court decided the negligence action without a jury and so no jury instruction was even at issue; in Graham, the Court of Appeals was concerned with the propriety of the trial judge setting aside a jury’s verdict on evidentiary grounds. In both cases, the issue was the medical mismanagement, vel non, in treating a patient with a preexisting condition of illness.