Court Opinion

ID: 9692826
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:07:29.75271+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:37.145658
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Jacobs, J.:
In the early morning hours of August 31, 1969, appel-lee Robert Noon, plaintiff below, was severely injured when an automobile operated by Jan E. Knavel smashed through the telephone booths where Mr. Noon was attempting to place a call. In this appeal, the appellant General Telephone Company of Pennsylvania argues, inter alia, that the location of its telephone booth, wherein the plaintiff was injured, did not constitute a proximate cause of the accident and consequently appellant should be granted a judgment n.o.v. I agree that the placement of the booth was not a substantial factor bringing about this accident and would therefore reverse the decision below.
The telephone booth where Mr. Noon was injured was located at the edge of the paved area of a service station along Bedford Street, a road leading into the City of Johnstown. Bedford Street runs approximately east-west, with traffic inbound to Johnstown coming in from the *218east, moving west to the city. The telephone booth was positioned on the south side of the road and sidewalk. Directly to the east of the booth a line of railroad tracks runs approximately north and south.
The booth and the tracks are at the bottom of a hill which rises to the east upon which Bedford Street executes an S-curve. Thus traffic approaching the city from the east proceeds downhill while it negotiates first a left and then a right hand curve before crossing the tracks and continuing past the phone booth on its left. The tracks are marked with a regular stoplight which turns red when trains approach, as well as flashing lights to warn traffic.
The events which culminated in the Knavel car striking Robert Noon in his telephone booth were set in motion on the evening of August 30, 1969. On that date, Jan E. Knavel, whose driver’s license was suspended, was driving around with another man when he noticed that his brakes were not operating properly. He took his car to Allison’s Service Station, located only two blocks from Mr. Knavel’s home.1 Mr. Knavel requested that temporary repairs be made on the brakes when he found that Mr. Allison was unable at that time to make the necessary permanent repairs. Mr. Allison proceeded to plug the hydraulic brake line to the left rear wheel2 and instructed Mr. Knavel to return the vehicle the next day for proper *219repairs. Aware that his car was in a defective condition, Mr. Knavel drove himself and his companion to a cookout some distance away over hilly terrain. There he drank and socialized, leaving around 1:30 a.m. to drive into Johnstown. About a half hour later, as he was approaching Johnstown, a police officer, parked in his patrol car at the side of the road, observed him commit a traffic violation by passing another car in an intersection at a high rate of speed.
The police set out in pursuit, but the Knavel car continued to accelerate. Mr. Knavel testified that about this time he noticed his accelerator pedal was stuck in the half-way position and that his brakes were not operating at all. He testified further that he attempted to remedy the situation by tapping on the gas pedal, which only served to drive it to the floor and increase the forward speed of his vehicle. He stated also that he attempted to apply the emergency brake. That slowed the car somewhat before it too failed. A number of other witnesses testified that the Knavel car slowed down on one or more occasions, at one point leaving long skid marks on the pavement which pulled to the right, onto the curb, in the manner of a car having no brakes on the left rear wheel.
Travelling at speeds estimated between 70 and 80 miles an hour, pursued by the police car with its emergency lights flashing and siren sounding, the Knavel car entered the downhill, S-curving stretch of road preceding the track and telephone booth. At that precise moment, a train operated by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company was advancing slowly into the intersection from the north. Testimony of some witnesses revealed that the speeding car glanced off a steel light pole located on the outside of the first curve of the S-turn, striking the passenger side of the vehicle. It careened into the lane of opposing traffic and drove up on the sidewalk bordering the outbound lane approximately where the train tracks intersected with the road, apparently in an effort to avoid *220collision with the train which at this point had almost completely blocked the roadway. Mr. Knavel denies this interpretation of his driving, however, and testifies that at that point he had given up hope of controlling his car and shut his eyes awaiting impact with the train.
■The impact came, the passenger side of the car coming in contact with the front of the train engine. The collision hurled the car five or six feet into the air and onto the property of the gas station where it came to rest against an unoccupied car, still upright though facing in the opposite direction, a total wreck. In the path of the car’s flight from the impact with the locomotive to the impact with the parked car was appellant’s phone booth in which stood plaintiff-appellee, Robert Noon, making a call. The car’s passage obliterated the booth and shattered the legs of its occupant in addition to causing serious injury to the remainder of his body. Mr. Noon was rushed to the hospital where both his legs were amputated and he was treated for his other broken bones and internal injuries. Jan E. Knavel, unscathed except for an abrasion on his forehead, fled the scene of the accident on foot. He turned himself in at the police station about an hour later.
The plaintiff-appellee brought suit against Mr. Kna-vel, Ned Allison, t/d/b/a Allison’s Service Station, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, and the appellant, General Telephone Company of Pennsylvania. After a lengthy trial the jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff, Robert Noon, in the amount of $216,761.00 against defendants Jan E. Knavel and the General Telephone Company. A verdict was returned for Ned Allison and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The General Telephone Company alone appealed, alleging error in the trial court’s denial of its motion for judgment n.o.v. and motion for a new trial.
It is plaintiff-appellee’s contention that appellant General Telephone Company was negligent in respect to Mr. *221Noon by positioning its booth in unreasonable disregard of the safety of its occupants, and that the location of the booth was a proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injuries. It is appellant’s primary contention that, even assuming that the jury was correct in finding the location of the telephone booth unsafe, and appellant’s conduct in positioning its booth negligent, any negligence on the part of the appellant was not a proximate cause of plaintiff-appellee’s injury. I shall discuss the question of causation without deciding whether in fact the conduct of the telephone company in locating its booth was negligent.
Proximate cause is an expression widely utilized in tort law to comprehend all the varieties of diverse issues and considerations which are inherent in determining the responsible cause of a given result.3 Much has been written by courts and commentators in hopes of clarifying this difficult subject4 but the area is still largely, perhaps by nature, a wilderness and the available guides less precise than one might like. In Pennsylvania recent attempts have been made to bring order to the concept by dispensing with traditional labels and by isolating the separate elements of its compound nature.5
The fundamental principle underlying the issue of causation is that the mere existence of negligence and the occurrence of an injury cannot impose liability on anyone. See, e.g., Whitner v. Lojeski, 437 Pa. 448, 263 A. 2d 889 (1970) ; Dornon v. Johnston, 421 Pa. 58, 218 A.2d 808 *222(1966); Cotter v. Bell, 417 Pa. 560, 208 A.2d 216 (1965); overruled on application of principle, Clevenstein v. Rizzuto, 439 Pa. 397, 266 A.2d 623 (1970); Cuthbert v. Philadelphia, 417 Pa. 610, 209 A. 2d 261 (1965); Majors v. Brodhead Hotel, 416 Pa. 265, 205 A. 2d 873 (1965). The term proximate cause is used to describe that which ties together the act or omission of the defendant and the injuries sustained by the plaintiff. Expressed as a single concept, the term has been defined in Pennsylvania as “ [t] hat which, in a natural and continuous sequence, unbroken by any efficient intervening cause, produces the injury, and without which the result would not have occurred.” Coyne v. Pittsburgh Rys. Co., 393 Pa. 326, 334, 141 A. 2d 830, 835 (1958). The plaintiff has the burden of proving that the defendant’s negligent conduct proximately caused the injuries complained of, by proving facts showing how the events occurred and how the defendant was responsible for those events, Noel v. Puckett, 427 Pa. 328, 235 A. 2d 380 (1967), or by producing evidence from which the fact-finder can draw a reasonable inference that the defendant’s negligent acts were the proximate cause of the injury. Zilka v. Sanctis Constr. Inc., 409 Pa. 396, 186 A.2d 897 (1962), cert. denied, 374 U.S. 850 (1963). It has further been stated that although the plaintiff need not produce such facts that irrefutably demonstrate with mathematical exactness the causal connection to be proven, he must introduce sufficient proof of causation to eliminate other conclusions fairly suggested by the evidence and preponderate in favor of the conclusion sought. Cuthbert v. Philadelphia, supra; Smith v. Bell Telephone Co. of Pennsylvania, 397 Pa. 134, 153 A.2d 477 (1959); cf. Noel v. Puckett, supra. These basic rules and expressions of the concept have developed in a considerable body of case law on the subject in Pennsylvania.
Recently, however, an attempt has been made to redefine the term and to distinguish its individual elements *223as an aid in applying the concept to the cases. Recognition has been given to the view that factual cause is distinct from true proximate cause, which is often called “legal cause” for clarity’s sake.6 Whereas factual cause “is invariably a question of fact [proximate or legal cause] ‘is essentially a problem of law .. . whether the defendant should be legally responsible for what he has caused.’ W. Prosser, Law of Torts §49, at 282 (1964). ‘It is [a question] of the policy as to imposing legal responsibility.’ Id. at 309.” Flickinger Estate v. Ritsky, 452 Pa. 69, 74, 305 A.2d 40, 43 (1973). Proximate or legal cause thus becomes a method employed by the courts for limiting the legal responsibility of an individual for the myriad consequences that could flow from his conduct. See W. Prosser, Handbook of the Law of Torts §§41, 42 (4th ed. 1971).7
On the other hand the concept of factual causation has been related to the Restatement (Second) of Torts §§431 (a), 432 (1965) by the Supreme Court in Flickinger Estate v. Ritsky, supra.8 These sections express what has *224been called the “substantial factor” test for determining causation, although the Restatement makes no distinction between factual and legal cause and simply refers to the issue as one of legal cause. In §431 the components of legal cause are identified so as to distinguish the substantial factor requirement from the issue of legal policy. Negligent conduct is considered to be a legal cause of harm, according to that section, when two conditions are present: the conduct is a substantial factor in bringing about the harm, and there is an absence of a rule of law relieving an actor of liability. The requirement that the negligent action be a substantial factor is further refined by §432(1). “[T]he actor’s negligent conduct is notasub-stantial factor in bringing about harm to another if the harm would have been sustained even if the actor had not been negligent.”9 The application of this section can eliminate the question of a defendant’s liability at the outset on the grounds that the conduct was not a substantial factor, and therefore not a true cause, in producing the injury.
In electing to follow the Restatement rule instead of the former Pennsylvania rule, the Supreme Court explained the superior breadth of the section. “[I]t speaks ... to [defendant’s] ‘negligent conduct,’ which denotes the physical act or omission involved as well as the legal *225concept of negligence; it relates this negligent conduct to the element of substantiality in bringing about the result, which is a requisite of legal cause as stated in §431 (a); and it says that substantiality is not present if the harm would have been sustained irrespective of the negligent conduct.” Whitner v. Lojeski, supra, at 456-57, 263 A.2d at 893-94. What the Restatement actually accomplishes, then, is to bring together under the substantial factor element two features of the defendant’s contribution to the plaintiff’s harm: the conduct itself and that quality of the conduct which makes it negligent. If both features do not coincide in active operation to produce the plaintiff’s injury, the negligent conduct is not a substantial factor producing harm and there can be no liability.
Keeping in mind that the Restatement rule was adopted in Pennsylvania for the purpose of elucidating the concept of substantiality in causation, it is apparent that the conduct of the appellant in the present case does not even meet this threshold requirement. The conduct of the General Telephone Company which plaintiff-appellee claims is negligent is the location of its telephone booth at the bottom of a hill, close to a sidewalk on the outside of the second turn in an S-curving roadway. Testimony from the plaintiff’s expert was introduced in an effort to support the appellee’s theory that the booth was located in unreasonable disregard for the safety of its occupants due to the combination of the hill and the double curve.10 The testimony revealed, however, that the *226plaintiff's severe injuries were sustained when a car operated carelessly, or even recklessly, by an unlicensed man who had been drinking, pursued by a police vehicle, with the accelerator stuck to the floor and without brakes, sped at a high rate of speed into a train and was catapulted into the air on a course which took it through the appellant’s booth, with its innocent occupant, and beyond. The situation of the booth in the destructive path of Mr. Knavel’s machine was undeniably one of the infinitude of events and conditions which led to Mr. Noon’s tragic injuries. However, that feature of its location which allegedly made the conduct of the appellant in so placing it negligent, i.e., the hill and the S-curve, was not shown by the plaintiff to have played any part in the accident. Rather it seems apparent that the same accident, with the same injurious results, would have occurred if the Knavel vehicle had bounced off a train at speeds in excess of 70 m.p.h. into the phone booth occupied by Mr. Noon, whether or not the road from which it departed was downhill and curving. To suppose that the hill and the curve were instrumental in causing the speed or direction of the car under the\circumstances revealed in the record, or that they in some naanner were responsible for the collision with the train or, the angle the flying car took to obliterate the telephone booth, would be impermissible speculation. See Barber v. John C. Kohler Co., *227428 Pa. 219, 237 A.2d 224 (1968); Noel v. Puckett, supra; Watkins v. Sharon Aerie No. 327 Fraternal Order of Eagles, 423 Pa. 396, 223 A.2d 742 (1966) ; Cuthbert v. Philadelphia, supra.
Moreover, the appellant herein could be properly held liable “only with respect to those harms which proceeded from a risk or hazard the foreseeability of which rendered its conduct negligent.” Metts v. Griglak, 438 Pa. 392, 396, 264 A.2d 684, 687 (1970).11 Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that the placement of appellant’s booth at its particular location on this specific road was negligent, the risk created thereby was that a driver might lose control of his vehicle and be unable to avoid striking the booth. The record reveals the efforts of the plaintiff to raise the inference that the occurrence of such an accident at this point was so probable that failure to anticipate it, and take precautions against it, is proof of negligence. As it happened in the present case, however, this potential hazard did not develop into injury. The driver did not lose control of his car due to the curves in the road; the vehicle was already out of control when it entered the dangerous stretch of highway. His conduct in closing his eyes, the unpredictable happenstance of his collision with the engine of a train, and the chance that the vehicle would be deflected into the area occupied by *228the booth can hardly be said to be either reasonably foreseeable by the appellant or a normal consequence of placing a public telephone along a busy road. Stanik v. Steuber, 439 Pa. 327, 266 A.2d 703 (1970).12 Rather than a reasonable probability to be anticipated as a natural result of the conduct here complained of, such an occurrence could be imagined as only a remote and extraordinary possibility.13 See Brusis v. Henkels, 376 Pa. 226, 102 A.2d 146 (1954); Dahlstrom v. Shrum, 368 Pa. 423, 84 A.2d 289 (1951); Guca v. Pittsburgh Rys. Co., 367 Pa. 579, 80 A.2d 779 (1951); Hoag v. Lake Shore & Michigan S.R.R. Co., 85 Pa. 293 (1877); Becker v. Borough of Schuylkill Haven, 200 Pa. Superior Ct. 305, 189 A.2d 764, allocatur refused, 200 Pa. Superior Ct. xxx (1963) ; Farley v. Sley *229System Garages, Inc., 187 Pa. Superior Ct. 243, 144 A.2d 600 (1958).
Appellants have moved for a judgment n.o.v. on the grounds that plaintiff-appellee failed to prove the requisite causal connection between appellant’s negligent conduct and appellee’s injuries. In considering a motion for judgment n.o.v. the evidence and all reasonable inferences arising therefrom must be viewed in a light most favorable to the verdict winner. Flickinger Estate v. Ritsky, supra; Kresovich v. Fitzsimmons, 439 Pa. 10, 264 A.2d. 585 (1970); Zilka v. Sanctis Constr., Inc., supra. Whereas ordinarily questions of causation are resolved by the jury, see Bleman v. Gold, 431 Pa. 348, 246 A.2d 376 (1968), it is the duty of the trial judge to determine in the first instance whether the requisites of causation can be met by the plaintiff’s evidence or whether it is to be allowed to remain in the hands of a jury. Cuthbert v. Philadelphia, supra. In reviewing the denial of appellant’s motion, this Court must also keep in mind “[t]he fundamental principle underlying the right of withdrawal of cases from the jury is that a case may be withdrawn only in clear cases in which as a matter of law the jury would not be legally justified in arriving at a verdict in favor of the party against whom the withdrawal is made.” 6 Standard Pennsylvania Practice 259 (1960). The verdict winner is not entitled to the benefit of those inferences which amount merely to guess or conjecture. Kresovich v. Fitzsimmons, supra.
In the present case it was plaintiff-appellee’s burden to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the appellant’s negligent placement of its phone booth was a legal cause of the harm sustained. It is my opinion that this burden was not met. To sustain the jury’s verdict against the appellant would permit a result to stand which had been reached through mere speculation.
This is a difficult case. Any person aware of Mr. Noon’s tragic injuries would hope that he obtain a large *230financial recovery as some slight recompense for his undeserved suffering. Nevertheless, meaningful appellate review demands a dispassionate consideration of the facts as they are presented on the record. Reading into the record facts which are not there, or distorting ones that are, does not serve the ends of justice, nor does abandoning to the jury the obligation of reaching the result as it is dictated by the facts, in order to avoid an unpleasant responsibility. It is the duty of this Court to give innocent victims a right of recovery against those who caused them harm. But it also is imperative to see that innocent defendants are not charged with liability for damage brought about through no fault of their own. In this case it is not disputed that defendant Knavel caused serious harm to the plaintiff. The argument that appellant is to be held liable for this damage is founded on a causal link so insubstantial as to render any connection between the appellant’s conduct and the plaintiff’s injury pure illusion. It is clear that the conduct of appellant which the plaintiff appellee seeks to identify as a legal cause of his injuries is no more than a fortuitous circumstance of the accident.
The judgment for Robert Noon against the appellant General Telephone Company of Pennsylvania should be reversed, and judgment granted n.o.v. for the appellant.
Watkins, P. J., and Van der Voort, J., join in this dissenting opinion.

. This is not Jan Knavel’s present address. Since the incident discussed herein, he has moved to Ohio.

. This is a temporary measure for fixing a broken brake line and is not to be equated with a proper repair of the system. It merely prevents all the brake fluil from leaking out, thus depriving the car of brakes entirely. By plugging the line to the left rear wheel, that wheel itself has no brake although the brakes on the other three wheels are still operating. The result of this is that the vehicle is operating with only three-quarters of its braking system, and any attempt to slow or stop by application of the hydraulic brakes tends to pull the car to the right, i.e, away from the free running wheel.

. See W. Prosser, Handbook of the Law of Torts §§41-45 (4th ed. 1971).

. See, e.g., Flickinger Estate v. Ritsky, 452 Pa. 69, 305 A.2d 40 (1973); Whitner v. Lojeski, 437 Pa. 448, 263 A.2d 889 (1970); Cuthbert v. Philadelphia, 417 Pa. 610, 209 A.2d 261 (1965) ; Majors v. Brodhead Hotel, 416 Pa. 265, 205 A.2d 873 (1965); Coyne v. Pittsburgh Rys. Co., 393 Pa. 326, 141 A.2d 830 (1958); Wisniewski v. The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co., 226 Pa. Superior Ct. 574, 323 A.2d 744 (1974); W. Prosser, Handbook of the Law of Torts, 236 n.1 (4th ed. 1971).

. See Whitner v. Lojeski, 437 Pa. 448, 263 A.2d 889 (1970).

. The term “legal cause” has been adopted by some authorities, notably Dean Prosser in • his treatise, Handbook of the Law of Torts §41 (4th ed. 1971), as preferable to “proximate cause,” probably to eliminate all the spontaneous legal associations generally connected with the latter term. Justice Pomeroy uses the terms interchangeably in his detailed discussion of the issue in Whitner v. Lojeski, 437 Pa. 448, 263 A.2d 889 (1970).

. A close reading of Dean Prosser on this subject would suggest that he does not view factual causation as a concept totally separate from proximate cause, but rather sees it as an individual unit included within the larger concept, along with legal cause. Thus factual cause can operate to limit liability without the aid of a rule of law when a connection between the defendant’s conduct and the injury cannot be proven. However, our courts have found it simpler and more expedient to simply separate the two at the outset. See Flickinger Estate v. Ritsky, 452 Pa. 69, 305 A.2d 40 (1973); Whitner v. Lojeski, 437 Pa. 448, 263 A.2d 889 (1970).

. In Whitner v. Lojeski, 437 Pa. 448, 263 A.2d 889 (1970), *224the Supreme Court adopts the rule formulated in the Restatement (Second) of Torts §432 (1) (1965) as a statement of the law preferable to Pennsylvania's prior “but-for” or “sine qua non” test, as it had been stated in Burrell Township v. Uncapher, 117 Pa. 353, 11 A. 619 (1887). In the same case, §431 (a) of the Restatement, which states the requisites of legal cause, is cited with approval.

. An exception to this rule is stated in Restatement (Second) of Torts §432 (2) (1965), which concerns the problem of concurrently operating forces, one of which was negligently set in motion by the defendant. In such cases, if both forces would be sufficient alone to cause the damage, the defendant’s conduct will be seen as a substantial factor in producing the harm.

. I am unable to agree that the record provides support for the idea that the telephone booth was endangered by the railroad track. The plaintiff’s own expert, a traffic engineer, stated and restated his opinion that the location of the booth was unsafe due to the curving, downhill road and the possibility that a car would deviate from the road somewhere in that area and cause damage to anything situated on the outside of the curve. He stated that he had considered the railroad crossing in making this analysis, but the only testimony he gave concerning the tracks was that the *226danger of accident was the same regardless of the booth’s position in respect to the tracks. Other witnesses, employees of the railroad responsible for the safe running of the trains, stated that the booth and the train presented no hazard to each other.
An effort has been made to support the jury’s finding of causation by reference to the jury view of the accident scene and the photographs submitted in evidence. Ordinarily, a view cannot be considered evidence of intangible concepts, such as the cause of damage. See A. Jenkins, Jr., Pennsylvania Trial Evidence Handbook §5.10 (1974). A review of the photographs also fails to support the conclusion that the phone booth was dangerously located with respect to the railroad.

. In Metts v. Griglak, 438 Pa. 392, 264 A.2d 684 (1970) grant of a judgment n.o.v. was affirmed in favor of defendant bus lines where a bus was operated at excessive speeds in snowy slushy conditions. The snow swirl allegedly created by the bus obscured the vision of a driver who had a collision after the bus had passed. It was held that such a collision was not a harm within the risk foreseeably created by a speeding bus, and furthermore the fact that the driver, blinded by snow, continued driving was so extraordinary as to be unforeseeable. Similarly, in the present case, the foreseeable risk arguably created by the location of the booth, like the risk of the speeding bus, never materialized, and the accident that did occur was so extraordinarily improbable as to be beyond any risk created.

. The statement of Mr. Justice Pomeroy in Stanik v. Steuber, 439 Pa. 327, 333, 266 A.2d 703, 706 (1970), would seem to apply equally in the present case: “The almost incredible stupidity and recklessness of these intervening acts of the . . . driver would serve to insulate [the appellant], if insulation were needed, from any liability for their consequences.”

. For the Restatement discussion of foreseeability as it relates to the present case, see Restatement (Second) of Torts, §435(2) (1965), which reads as follows: “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.” Comment c to that section states in part: “the highly extraordinary nature of the result which has followed from the actor’s conduct (with or without the aid of an intervening force) indicates that the hazard which brought about or assisted in bringing about that result was not among the hazards with respect to which the conduct was negligent.” See also §430, comment c, which states in part: “Harm may be sustained as a consequence of conduct which is negligent only because, and in so far as it subjects another to some particular hazard. But the harm may result in some other manner than through the other’s exposure to this hazard. If so, there can be no liability even though in all other respects the manner in which the harm is brought about is such as would make the actor liable.”