Court Opinion

ID: 9756267
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 21:19:30.067026+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:17.301923
License: Public Domain

Roberts, J.,
concurring. I agree with the result that has been reached by the court in this case but desire to state separately and specifically the reason upon which I base such agreement.
The allegations contained in the declaration here, even if well pleaded and admitted by the demurrer, are insufficient to establish that the defendant should have anticipated that as a natural and probable consequence of his leaving his motor vehicle on the hospital grounds unlocked and unattended it would be driven off by some unauthorized person. It is well settled that a defendant’s original act of negligence will be considered as a remote and not a proximate cause of a plaintiff’s injury when there is an intervening act on the part of a responsible third person unless it be made to appear that the defendant reasonably should have anticipated that such an intervening act would *316be a natural and probable consequence of his own act. Mahogany v. Ward, 16 R. I. 479. It is my opinion then that in those circumstances it was not error for the trial justice to find as a matter of law that the intervening act broke the causal connection between the defendant’s original act of negligence and the plaintiff’s injury. Prue v. Goodrich Oil Co., 49 R. I. 120. I conclude, therefore, that the demurrer to the declaration was properly sustained.
Weintraub & McElhiney, Samuel W. Weintraub, for plaintiffs Viola L. Clements and Harold J. Clements.
Armando D’lorio, for plaintiff Thomas F. Boutier.
Boss, Conlan, Keenan, Bulman & Rice, John F. Dolan, for defendant.