Court Opinion

ID: 9467725
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:54:59.710836+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:29.514479
License: Public Domain

KEARSE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
With all due respect, I dissent from the majority’s view that the trial court’s instructions were sufficient to present to the jury the defense of intervening cause.
The major defense presented by defendants Grumman Corporation and Grumman Aerospace Corporation (collectively “Grumman”) was that the duty of care with respect to the airplane that crashed, causing *120the death of plaintiff's decedent, had shifted from Grumman to the Navy. The defense was based on the evidence that the airplane, sold by Grumman to the Navy in 1966, had suffered wing damage in 1967 as the result of a malfunction of a bomb ejector rack, not manufactured by Grumman, that had been added to the plane by the Navy; shortly thereafter the damaged wing was given a temporary repair of “extremely poor quality” by the Navy, and, notwithstanding naval procedures and Grumman’s repair manual instructions to the contrary, the Navy proceeded to use the airplane without more permanent repairs for more than five years. Grumman contends that the Navy was negligent and that its negligence was an intervening and superseding cause of the crash in 1973.
Grumman's theory is soundly based in New York law, under which “liability turns upon whether the intervening act is a normal or foreseeable consequence of the situation created by the defendant’s negligence.” Derdiarian v. Felix Contracting Corp., 51 N.Y.2d 308, 315, 434 N.Y.S.2d 166, 414 N.E.2d 666 (1980); see Mull v. Ford Motor Co., 368 F.2d 713, 717 (2d Cir. 1966); Ventricelli v. Kinney System Rent A Car, Inc., 45 N.Y.2d 950, 952, 411 N.Y.S.2d 555, 383 N.E.2d 1149 (1978); Sheehan v. City of New York, 40 N.Y.2d 496, 503, 387 N.Y.S.2d 92, 354 N.E.2d 832 (1976). The jury thus should have been instructed to consider whether the Navy’s negligence was foreseeable to Grumman:
If the intervening act is extraordinary under the circumstances, not foreseeable in the normal course of events, or independent of or far removed from the defendant’s conduct, it may well be a superseding act which breaks the causal nexus (see e. g., Martinez v. Lazaroff, 48 N.Y.2d 819, 820, 424 N.Y.S.2d 126, 399 N.E.2d 1148; Ventricelli v. Kinney System Rent A Car, 45 N.Y.2d 950, 952, 411 N.Y.S.2d 555, 383 N.E.2d 1149 supra; Rivera v. City of New York, 11 N.Y.2d 856, 227 N.Y.S.2d 676, 182 N.E.2d 284). Because questions concerning what is foreseeable and what is normal may be the subject of varying inferences, as is the question of negligence itself, these issues generally are for the fact finder to resolve.
Derdiarian v. Felix Contracting Corp., supra, 51 N.Y.2d at 315, 434 N.Y.S.2d 166, 414 N.E.2d 666. To allow the jury to consider the theory with comprehension, the charge should have been complete, accurate, and easily understandable to the lay person. See, e. g., 1 New York Pattern Jury Instructions 1-2 (1974). The recommended New York charge with respect to intervening causes is as follows:
If you find that defendant was negligent but that plaintiff’s injuries were caused by the act of a third person, defendant may be held liable for such injuries if you further find that a reasonably prudent person, situated as the defendant was prior to the happening of the incident, would have foreseen an act of the kind committed by the third person as a probable consequence of the defendant’s negligence. If your finding is that a reasonably prudent person would not have foreseen an act of the kind committed by the third person as a probable consequence of defendant’s negligence, then defendant is not responsible for plaintiff’s injuries and your verdict must be for defendant.
Id. at 212 (as modified in 1980 Supp.).1
The majority recognizes that “[tjhere was clearly enough evidence adduced at trial to warrant a jury decision on Grumman’s de*121fense theory.” (Majority Opinion at 115, ante.) It holds that because the parties’ lawyers had argued intervening cause in their summations, the judge’s charge on proximate cause was sufficient to instruct the jury to consider intervening or superseding cause. I do not agree. Needless to say, the judge began his charge by instructing the jury that it was their duty to follow the law as it was stated by him. The charge that followed did not once mention that the jury might consider whether the Navy’s negligence had been so independent or unforeseeable in the normal course of events as to have broken the causal chain between Grumman and the fatal accident.
The portion of the charge relied on by the majority, to the extent that it is not directed toward the concept of joint causation (“There may be more than one proximate cause of an accident”), was completely unenlightening on intervening cause or foreseeability. It stated only that
Grumman has contended that the negligence of the Navy was the sole proximate cause of the crash.
If you find that the Navy’s negligence was the sole proximate cause, then plaintiff may not recover.
The charge gave no indication whatever of the basis on which the jury might find that Grumman’s negligence was not a proximate cause of the accident — i. e., the remoteness and unforeseeability of the Navy’s negligence.
Indeed, the charge as a whole may have led the jury to believe that Grumman would be liable despite unforeseeability. The only instruction mentioning foreseeability was as follows:
In determining whether the defendant was negligent, you must consider whether it was foreseeable that the defendant’s acts or omissions created a risk of the kind of injury which occurred. A person is responsible for the consequences of his conduct if the risk of such an injury was reasonably foreseeable. It is not necessary that the defendant should have had notice of the particular condition from which the injury would occur, or the precise injury that would result, if the possibility of the kind of accident which occurred would have been clear to the ordinarily prudent person.
This does not mention the foreseeability of the Navy’s negligence or of any act of the Navy; rather, each of the three sentences focuses on the foreseeability of the kind of injury, undoubtedly directing the jury’s thoughts to the fatal crash, rather than to the negligent repairs that preceded it. If the jury deduced from this portion of the charge that it was to give any thought at all to the Navy’s negligent repairs, it would be less likely to equate the Navy’s negligence with the “kind of injury” than with the “condition” that led to the injury. And as to the latter, the jury plainly was instructed that “[i]t is not necessary that the defendant should have had notice of the particular condition from which the injury would occur .... ” (Emphasis added.) Thus, to the extent that the jury may have thought that foreseeability bore on the question of the Navy’s negligence in relationship to Grumman’s negligence as a proximate cause, it is more likely to have believed that the Navy’s negligence did not have to be foreseeable in order for Grumman to be found liable.
In short, the charge was not a complete statement of the applicable law, and I cannot believe the lay jury had any notion that it was to consider whether the Navy’s negligent repair was so “far removed from” Grumman’s conduct that it “[broke] the causal nexus.” Derdiarian v. Felix Contracting Corp., supra, 51 N.Y.2d at 315, 434 N.Y.S.2d 166, 414 N.E.2d 666. The majority’s ruling means that despite the presentation of ample evidence upon which a jury could find that the plaintiff’s injury was caused by a third person’s act, independent of or far removed from the defendant’s negligence, the trial court need never mention to the jury the principle that if an act of the sort that intervened was not foreseeable the defendant should not be found liable. The practical result is to read intervening or superseding cause out of the law of New York.
*122I would reverse and remand for a new trial.2

. Among the authorities relied on in the commentary on this recommended jury instruction is Restatement (Second) of Torts § 452 (1965), which reads as follows:
(1) Except as stated in Subsection (2), the failure of a third person to act to prevent harm to another threatened by the actor’s negligent conduct is not a superseding cause of such harm.
(2) Where, because of lapse of time or otherwise, the duty to prevent harm to another threatened by the actor’s negligent conduct is found to have shifted from the actor to a third person, the failure of the third person to prevent such harm is a superseding cause.

. I have no quarrel with so much of part II of the majority’s opinion as holds that it was proper to submit to the jury the theory of strict tort liability. Nonetheless, because we do not ' know the basis of the jury’s verdict, the inadequacy of the instructions on the negligence claim requires a retrial.