Court Opinion

ID: 9539674
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:08:23.022294+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:59:12.677183
License: Public Domain

*860Mallery, J.
(dissenting) — From January to October, 1957, the decedent was frustrated by others in repeated attempts at suicide. She then achieved what to her seemed a desirable result by the deliberate use of understood means. The cause of death is not challenged. Instead, the majority opinion holds that a cause of the cause is the proximate cause, i.e., that the cause of her mental state is the proximate cause of her death. I agree that a cause continues to-be a proximate cause of all of the effects which are directly and exclusively produced by it. Notwithstanding this, a cause ceases to be a proximate cause when an independent and efficient cause intervenes between it and the effect in question.
Our concern in this case is with the nature of intervening independent causes. I can agree that they are not the mere changes of aspect which mechanical forces produce in the course of natural processes. The interposition of an independent, voluntary and understanding human agency, without which the process set in motion by the initial cause would have ended prior to or without the effect in question, breaks the chain of causation and makes the initial cause remote. This is, of course, not the case where the initial cause deprives the mind of volition and understanding of natural processes. A human act then is no more than a mechanical continuation of the process set in motion by the initial cause. Thus, the cause of a mental state of delirium is the proximate cause of what the delirious person unwittingly does. The cause which produced an uncontrollable frenzy is for the same reason the cause of the effects thereof.
This is the rule of Arsnow v. Red Top Cab Co., 159 Wash. 137, 292 Pac. 436, which is precisely in point and which the majority opinion overrules sub silentio. The decedent was not delirious. She knew precisely what she was doing and what the effect of her act would be, neither did she act in an uncontrollable frenzy. Under these circumstances, her knowing and intentional act was not the mechanical continuation of such a natural process as to be logically attributable to the defendants.
*861The majority opinion, in basing its result on uncontrol-lability, seems to hold either that the decedent did not want to commit suicide and, without knowingly intending to achieve that result, surrendered to an uncontrollable impulse to take the thirty-six sleeping pills, which theory is factually untenable, or that in following a course, which we think was unwise, acted pursuant to an uncontrollable election of conduct. Insanity does not make every unwise human act uncontrollable. On the contrary a desired end is achieved by an act that is specifically controlled for that purpose. Otherwise, every unwise act is uncontrollable within the purview of the majority opinion.
I dissent.
Hill, Donworth, and Ott, JJ., concur with Mallery, J.
December 11, 1961. Petition for rehearing denied.