Court Opinion

ID: 9656313
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 19:46:28.939009+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:31.571585
License: Public Domain

OTIS, Justice
(dissenting).
The opinion of the majority is correct when it refers to the “unusual circumstances” of this case. A brief review of the facts indicates that the circumstances are indeed extraordinary.
Appellant Brainerd International Raceway, Inc. (BIR) is the owner of an automobile racetrack. Races are customarily held during summer weekends, and spectators may view the action from either a grandstand or an infield area which is separated from the track by a fence. On the day of this accident, plaintiff Rieger and defendant Zackoski, both about 19 years old and close friends, were infield spectators of the races. After all races were completed and the spectators were departing, Zackoski and another friend, Herges, apparently saw a car on the track. Thereupon they drove *25their own cars onto the track, eluding BIR security guards who were preoccupied with directing traffic on the main highway.
While driving around the track, the cars of Zackoski and Herges were seen by Rieger. He jumped the infield fence and walked out onto the racetrack. By then the Herges car had been discovered by BIR security guards, and waved off the track. The Zackoski car, however, went for another lap. While the Zackoski car was still some 300 yards away, Rieger began to wave his arms in an attempt to stop the car so he could be picked up. Rieger was clearly visible, waving his arms like a semaphore, but the Zackoski car made no effort to slow down or to otherwise avoid striking Rieger, although there was ample opportunity to do so. Rieger was hit and severely injured.
Under these circumstances, in my opinion, the trial court’s failure to give an instruction on superseding cause was prejudicial error which requires a new trial.
In applying the rule of superseding cause, a defendant’s antecedent negligence is immaterial. It may well be that BIR was negligent in allowing Zackoski on the racetrack. However, the totally unforeseeable behavior of Rieger and Zackoski should, in my opinion, justify a jury’s relieving appellant of liability even if the original negligence was a substantial factor in bringing about the accident. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 440 comment b (1965) provides:
A superseding cause relieves the actor from liability, irrespective of whether his antecedent negligence was or was not a substantial factor in bringing about the harm. Therefore, if in looking back from the harm and tracing the sequence of events by which it was produced, it is found that a superseding cause has operated, there is no need of determining whether the actor’s antecedent conduct was or was not a substantial factor in bringing about the harm.
I have no quarrel with the holding in Kroeger v. Lee, 270 Minn. 75, 132 N.W.2d 727 (1965) cited by the majority. But where there is a reasonable doubt as to the foreseeability of the intervening acts, superseding cause becomes a jury question. Sandhofer v. Abbott-Northwestern Hospital, 283 N.W. 362 (Minn.1979); Kroeger v. Lee, 270 Minn. 75, 132 N.W.2d 727 (1965); Strobel v. Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific R., 255 Minn. 201, 96 N.W.2d 195 (1959).
In this case there can be little doubt but that the failure of Zackoski to brake or swerve to avoid striking Rieger was unforeseeable by appellant. It approaches willful and wanton negligence.
Under very similar facts we affirmed a jury instruction on superseding cause in Strobel v. Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific R., 255 Minn. 201, 96 N.W.2d 195 (1959) where a railroad employee, following the orders of his employer, placed a ladder in the middle of a bridge used for automobile traffic in order to make repairs on an overhead deck. The employee was on the ladder when it was struck by a car driven by one Heilman, injuring the employee. The employer claimed that the intervening acts of Heilman amounted to a superseding cause, and this court stated:
Although it was reasonably foreseeable that Heilman and other motorists would be driving over the bridge in the lane in which plaintiff had placed the ladder, we cannot hold as a matter of law that it was reasonably foreseeable that Heilman, who entered upon the bridge in low gear at a speed of about 8 miles per hour, and who admittedly killed his motor after driving 50 to 70 feet on the bridge, would drive an additional 200 or more feet (or a total bridge distance of 275 feet) without seeing directly in front of him plaintiff on a ladder in a position of peril without taking steps to avoid the collision. Whether, under the circumstances, Heil-man’s failure to stop or take other steps to avoid colliding with plaintiff’s ladder was an intervening and proximate cause which broke the chain of causation from any prior negligence of the Rock Island was for the jury. Where a second-party tortfeasor as the driver of an automobile approaches plaintiff, who is in plain sight and in a position of obvious peril for a sufficient length of time to enable such *26driver in the exercise of reasonable care to avoid a collision, and he fails to do so, the driver’s failure to act so as to avoid the collision is an efficient, intervening and proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries which breaks the natural sequence and progression of the original tortfeasor’s negligence as a proximate cause.
Id. at 209-10, 96 N.W.2d at 202 (footnote omitted); accord Barrett v. Nash Finch Co., 228 Minn. 156, 36 N.W.2d 526 (1949).
The majority would distinguish these cases by noting that here a racetrack rather than a public highway is involved. But unlike the claim of the driver in Strobel, Zackoski had no other vehicles to distract him. He had the entire racetrack to himself. To compound the inevitability of an accident, Rieger did nothing to protect himself.
It is hard to imagine more foolhardy behavior than to run out in the middle of a racetrack with a speeding car bearing down. No proprietor should be expected to anticipate behavior bordering on madness. BIR’s liability for its antecedent negligence should not encompass such extraordinary consequences as those resulting from the intentional, unpredictable acts of Zackoski and Rieger. See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 442 and comments (1965).
Strobel and similar cases make clear that the antecedent negligence of a defendant may result in liability for intervening acts of ordinary negligence, but not for gross and unpredictable negligence. See W. Prosser, The Law of Torts 282 (4th ed. 1971). I would remand for a new trial.