Court Opinion

ID: 9600676
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:30:04.43326+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:55.389759
License: Public Domain

GrOOD WIN, J.,
specially concurring.
Like the majority, I am satisfied that the instruction on proximate cause should not have been given in connection with the plaintiff’s own negligence. Our decision, however, should not be understood as approving in full the instruction quoted in the majority opinion.
It smacks of apostasy for a judge who has given the traditional instruction on proximate cause countless times to suggest that it is a bad instruction. Nonetheless, when we know better, we should not approve an instruction which is both confusing and inaccurate.
*575When the traditional Oregon instruction on proximate cause is reduced to its simplest form, as it has been by an able committee of the bar, it reads as follows:
“The term ‘proximate cause’ means a cause which in a direct, unbroken sequence produces the damage complained of and without which the damage would not have occurred. Negligence is the proximate cause of the damage when the damage is the natural or probable result of the negligence. Such negligence need not be the only cause, 'but it must be one of them and such as might have been reasonably foreseen as leading to damage of the general nature claimed in this case.” (Italics added.) Instruction No. 15.01, Oregon Jury Instructions for Civil Cases, Oregon State Bar (1962).
The foregoing instruction is talking about ultimate legal liability—not about causation. The jury, however, is not in on this secret. It is invited to think about causation. In that context foreseeability is nonsense. I do not criticize either the bar committee or the judges who use the instruction. The committee felt itself to be, and no doubt was, bound to reflect its best understanding of the pronouncements previously made 'by this and other courts.
Turning to the portion of the instruction in italics, the first sentence so singled out is obviously misleading. Negligence (conduct) is not necessarily the proximate cause, legal cause, or any other kind of cause of injury unless it is first the factual cause. Whether the injury is a natural or probable result of negligence gets us nowhere. Many a failure to exercise care is pregnant with natural or even probable results which do not happen to occur. Again, another failure to exercise care may produce highly unlikely, unnatural, or improbable results. One may *576contemplate his own illustrations of these propositions. See Green, Rationale of Proximate Cause 77-118 (1927) for others. Suppose a defendant motorist takes the wrong side of a sharp curve on a mountain road used by only three or four cars a day. If the defendant meets the plaintiff and injures him, there is no doubt about the actual cause of the collision. Foreseeability and probability would support a verdict of negligence. In some states, legislation (no doubt based upon foreseeability) would take from the jury the question of negligence. Foreseeability does not, however, go to the question of causation. See Tullgren v. Company, 82 NH 268, 276, 133 A 4, 46 ALR 380 (1926). In such a ease it is unnecessary to give any instruction on causation. There is no issue on it.
The next sentence in the quoted instruction also contains matter which properly belongs elsewhere in the instructions, but only if appropriate to the case. The first clause, “Such negligence need not be the only cause, but must be one of the causes,” is a concept that ought to be conveyed to the jury only in multiple-cause cases when the jury is 'being told how to match up causation in fact (if they find it) with negligence (if they find it) in reference to the ultimate question of liability. Moreover, the remaining matter in italics has no place in the jury’s consideration of causation at all. Whether the defendant’s conduct caused the plaintiff’s injury ought to be decided, but it ought to be decided by clear heads. The conduct either caused injury or it did not. See Leon Green, The Causal Relation Issue in Negligence Law, 60 Mich L Rev 543 (1962).
Ideally, the fact of causation should be decided first, in the relatively rare case in which it needs to *577be submitted to the jury. After the jury has decided or has been instructed that the defendant’s conduct played a substantial causal role in bringing about the plaintiff’s injury, then is the time for the jury to consider whether that conduct was negligent. It is at this point, and at this point only, that the foreseeability of harm has relevance. If no harm was foreseeable, then perhaps the defendant’s conduct was not negligent. If some harm was foreseeable, then perhaps the conduct was negligent. Deciding that matter is ordinarily jury work.
A new approach to the instruction on causation will require some changes in pleadings and in the preparation for trial, but it will be of real service to juries. 'Obviously a complete set of instructions cannot be promulgated in a single opinion. Nor can every kind of factual situation be anticipated. A significant start will be made if the concept of foreseeability is removed from the instruction on causation.
I concur in the result.