Court Opinion

ID: 9765949
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:26:11.625373+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:17.060730
License: Public Domain

SPAETH, Judge
(concurring) :
I agree with the majority’s conclusion that the judgment should be affirmed but not with its discussion of proximate cause.
The majority correctly states that appellants are liable only if their “conduct was a substantial factor in bringing about the appellee’s harm.” However, in deciding whether appellant’s conduct was such a substantial factor, the majority incorrectly applies the following test: first it *338asks whether the conduct was a “factual cause” of the harm; and then it asks whether there was a superseding cause. “Only if some other cause was a superseding cause can appellants’ conduct be said to have not been a substantial factor.” At 1295.
In order to decide whether conduct is a substantial factor in bringing about harm, one must indeed first ask whether the conduct was a factual cause of the harm; but if the answer is that it was, one does not then jump to asking whether there was a superseding cause. While proof of factual cause is necessary to prove substantial factor, by itself it is not sufficient.
If the proof of substantial factor is to be sufficient, the plaintiff must show not only factual cause, i. e„ that the harm would not have occurred but for the defendant’s conduct, but also that the defendant’s conduct had
such an effect in producing the harm as to lead reasonable men to regard it as a cause, using that word in the popular sense, in which there always lurks the idea of responsibility, rather than in the so-called “philosophic sense” which includes every one of the great number of events without which any happening would not have occurred. Each of these events is a cause in the so-called “philosophic sense”, yet the effect of many of them is so insignificant that no ordinary mind would think of them as causes.
Rest. Torts, Second § 431, comment a.
In deciding what the “ordinary mind would think,” a number of considerations may be important, either by themselves or in a combination:
(a) . the number of other factors which contribute in producing the harm and the extent of the effect which they have in producing it:
(b) whether the actor’s conduct has created a force or series of forces which are in continuous and active operation up to the time of the harm, or has created a *339situation harmless unless acted upon by other forces for which the actor is not responsible;
(c) lapsed time.
Rest. Torts, Second § 433.
When this test is applied to the facts of the present case, it appears that the proof of substantial factor was sufficient. First, the number of other factors contributing to the harm was not large; granted that the accident was unusual, it does not remind one of a Rube Goldberg sequence. And second, by taking no precautions after the earlier accidents, appellants continued to conduct an operation that they should have anticipated might produce the very harm appellee suffered.
Once it is shown that a defendant’s negligent conduct is the proximate, or legal, cause of harm, the question becomes whether there is any “rule of law relieving the [defendant] from liability because of the manner in which his negligence resulted in the harm.” Rest. Torts, Second § 431(b). Here the rule of law argued is that of superseding cause. Since I agree with the majority that there was no superseding cause, and since I also agree with its disposition of the other issues, I join in the order that the judgment should be affirmed.
JACOBS and HOFFMAN, JJ., join in this opinion.