Court Opinion

ID: 9725712
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 12:04:23.725749+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:18.766766
License: Public Domain

Markman, P.J.,
(dissenting). I respectfully dissent and would affirm the judgment of the trial court. The majority would impose liability upon defendant for the criminal acts of a third party under circumstances so remote and unforeseeable that no duty from defendant to the decedent can fairly be found. Even if such a duty could be discerned, I believe that there is no proximate causal relationship between defendant’s conduct and plaintiff’s injuries — or even a causation in fact relationship. While I do not disagree with Judge Kelly’s characterization of the law of negligence in Michigan, I strongly disagree with the application of such law to the present situation. The critical facts are as follows:
(1) In the context of a quarrel with neighborhood youths who defendant and his adult son felt had been harassing the son, and against whom he may have felt the son needed to defend himself, defendant handed his son the son’s firearm in response to the son running up to the house and urgently demanding it. On one earlier occasion, the son had had a firearm brandished at him.
*195(2) After handing the firearm to his son, defendant followed his son and attempted to physically restrain him from directing the firearm toward the youths. Possibly as a result of this effort, the son did not use his firearm against the youths.
(3) At the same time he attempted to restrain his son, defendant screamed to neighbors to call the police.
(4) The police, in fact, arrived shortly thereafter. At or shortly before that time, the youths dispersed and the son went back into the house with the firearm tucked away in his belt. The police questioned defendant about what had occurred.
(5) Without the apparent knowledge of defendant, his son then obtained the keys to his own car from the house and drove off in his own car.
(6) The son stored a second firearm in the house from where he had obtained the car keys and a third firearm in the glove compartment of the car in which he had driven off.
(7) Without the apparent knowledge of defendant, his son drove to a nearby convenience store.
(8) Apparently by chance, the son encountered the decedent, another neighbor with whom the son had been feuding, outside the convenience store.
(9) The son rammed the decedent’s car with his own car, got out of his car, and shot the decedent six times with the firearm earlier handed to him by defendant.
(10) Although mentally disturbed and subject to fits of rage, the son had no history of violence or firearm use.
“Negligence is not actionable unless it involves the invasion of a legally protected interest, the protection *196of a right.” Palsgraf v Long Island R Co, 248 NY 339, 341; 162 NE 99 (1928). Whatever the wisdom of defendant’s decision to hand his son a firearm, I do not believe that he owed a duty recognized in the law to the decedent. In determining whether a duty exists, the foreseeability of the harm is a critical consideration.1 Colangelo v Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity, 205 Mich App 129, 132; 517 NW2d 289 (1994). The foreseeable harm envisioned by defendant when he handed his son the firearm was that his son would use the firearm to harm one of the youths who were allegedly harassing him outside their home. In my judgment, the dissipation of this threat with the police arriving at the scene, the youths dispersing, and the son returning inside the house constituted an intervening circumstance that effectively severed the linkage between defendant’s action and his son’s subsequent criminal conduct. What happened after this episode could not reasonably have been foreseen by defendant, and he is, therefore, not legally responsible.
*197Had the son used the firearm handed to him by his father to shoot one of the youths outside their home, this would have been a substantially different matter. Such an act would have been a far more direct and foreseeable consequence of defendant’s conduct. It would not have mattered in determining his legal duty, under such a circumstance, that defendant had not foreseen which particular youth would be shot; any of them would have been within the class of potential victims reasonably foreseeable by defendant under the circumstances. However, defendant should not be held accountable for any subsequent actions by his son — no matter how unpredictable, no matter how attenuated the causal link — simply because his son may have been “agitated” at the time he was handed the firearm by his father. In determining the existence of a legal duty, the law focuses upon “whether it is foreseeable that the actor’s conduct may create a risk of harm to the victim.” Moning v Alfono, 400 Mich 425, 439; 254 NW2d 759 (1977). Defendant’s legal duty to ensure that his conduct did not create a risk of harm to the youths outside his home does not transform itself into a legal duty with regard to the rest of the world. Defendant could not reasonably have anticipated his son’s conduct following the events outside their home. Unbeknown to defendant, his son returned into their house, retrieved his keys, and drove off in his own car. Unbeknown to defendant, his son drove to a nearby convenience store. Unbeknown to defendant (and to his son), the decedent was outside the store. Unbeknown to defendant, his son proceeded to ram the decedent’s car, leave his car, and carry out a criminal act by shooting the decedent. When defendant handed the *198firearm to his son, it was simply not foreseeable that anything approximating this chain of events would occur.
Judge Kelly states that “it was foreseeable that [the son] would respond to a perceived threat by firing [the firearm] at a member of the Ross family.” Ante at 188. Judge Kelly offers no support for this conclusory statement. There was no “member of the Ross family” among the youths outside defendant’s home. There is no evidence that the son was searching for a “member of the Ross family” when he drove off in his car. There is no evidence that any “member of the Ross family” was likely to be found at the convenience store. If this were the son’s intention, one would suppose that he would have gone directly to the Ross house nearby, where he was far more likely to have encountered “members of the Ross family” than at the local convenience store. To extrapolate from the fact that his son harbored ill feelings toward the Ross family that it was foreseeable on defendant’s part that the son would shoot a member of the Ross family, under circumstances concerning which defendant had no knowledge, at a place where neither he nor his son had any expectation of ever encountering a member of the Ross family, is a convolution that would impose an extraordinarily broad legal duty upon defendant. In my judgment, such an imposition is without authority. No legal duty at all is owed to the unforeseeable plaintiff. See, generally, Palsgraf, supra2
*199Second, I do not believe that defendant’s conduct can properly be characterized as a cause in fact of the decedent’s shooting. Cause in fact generally requires a showing that “but for” the defendant’s action, the plaintiff’s injury would not have occurred. Skinner v Square D Co, 445 Mich 153, 163; 516 NW2d 475 (1994), citing Prosser & Keeton, Torts (5th ed), § 41, p 266. As the Supreme Court stated in Dedes v Asch, 446 Mich 99, 106, n 2; 521 NW2d 488 (1994), quoting 4 Harper, James & Gray, Torts (2d ed), § 20.2, pp 89-91:
“Through all the diverse theories of proximate cause runs a common thread; almost all agree that defendant’s wrongful conduct must be a cause in fact of plaintiff’s injury before there is liability. This notion is not a metaphysical one, but an ordinary matter-of-fact inquiry into the existence or nonexistence of a causal relation as lay people would view it. Clearly, this is not a quest for a sole cause. Probably it cannot be said of any event that it has a single causal antecedent; usually there are many.” [Emphasis added.]
A plaintiff “must adequately establish cause in fact in order for legal cause or ‘proximate cause’ to become a relevant issue.” Skinner, supra at 163. Absent defendant’s action in the instant case, his son would have had exactly the same state of mind, exactly the same access to his own firearms, exactly the same *200access to his own car, exactly the same likelihood of accidentally encountering the decedent, and exactly the same inclination to carry out a heinous crime. The killing of the decedent would have occurred under exactly the same circumstances, with or without defendant’s action in handing his son a firearm. There is, in essence, no “but for” demonstration possible here, and, therefore, no causation in fact.
Third, I do not believe that defendant’s conduct was a proximate cause of the shooting in view of the intervening events that transpired. “The questions of duty and proximate cause are interrelated because . . . both depend in part on foreseeability.” Moning, supra at 439. The foreseeability analysis in the proximate cause context is a more subtle one that emphasizes the remoteness of events. As the Supreme Court has observed:
Once a jury or judge has found that the defendant was negligent and that the plaintiff suffered injuries, it must be determined, whether the plaintiff’s injuries were caused by the defendant’s wrongful conduct and, then, if the defendant did cause the injuries, judge whether the plaintiff’s injuries were too insignificantly related to or too remotely effected by the defendant’s negligence.
Of all the elements necessary to support recovery in a tort action, causation is the most susceptible to summary determination for it usually amounts to a logical connection of cause to effect. [Davis v Thornton, 384 Mich 138, 145; 180 NW2d 11 (1970).]
Beyond the merely unanticipated nature of the events that occurred between the time of defendant’s action and the shooting, the instant facts indicate that the son, without defendant’s involvement, easily could have obtained one of his firearms before the shooting. *201In the course of either obtaining his car keys or driving to the convenience store — both of which actions were necessary conditions precedent to the shooting — the son had full access to his own firearms. His ready access to these firearms made it virtually irrelevant that defendant handed him one of these firearms. Defendant’s action was not so “significant” or integral to the shooting that it should properly be regarded as a proximate cause. As part of the chain of events leading to the shooting, defendant’s action was genuinely incidental, neither leading inexorably to the tragedy that occurred nor precipitating any dangerous or destructive force that could not later be contained. While Judge Kelly is correct that the specific manner or detail of the injury need not be foreseen or anticipated, Babula v Richardson, 212 Mich App 45, 53; 536 NW2d 834 (1995), to characterize the Palsgrafian chain of events in the instant case as properly attributable to the action of defendant is to impose legal responsibility upon an individual who is not truly culpable.
Judge Kelly describes defendant’s conduct as carrying “some degree of moral blame.” Ante at 189. Indeed, it is this notion, not any analysis of cause, that is at the heart of the majority’s decision.3 The essence of Judge Kelly’s argument is that the son’s mental disorders made defendant’s act of handing his son a firearm negligence per se, at least when he was in some state of agitation.4 By this argument, Judge *202Kelly would hold defendant similarly responsible for the killing of a total stranger at the convenience store or, for that matter, for a killing occurring at almost any later juncture. Once he handed his adult son a firearm during what may have appeared to him to be an extraordinary situation, defendant was permanently ensnared in some ongoing joint venture with his son, forever responsible for any subsequent actions taken by his son no matter how unexpected these actions would have been to defendant.
While one may reasonably argue that defendant’s son was not the type of person who should have been in the lawful possession of a firearm, this is a matter of public policy, any flaws of which should not be borne by defendant through having liability imposed upon him for the actions of his twenty-five-year-old son. Whatever Judge Kelly’s estimation of defendant’s “moral blame,” because he cannot be said by any reasonable standard to have caused, or been the proximate cause of, the fatal shooting, defendant bears no legal blame.* ***5
*203Judge Kelly also opines that her conclusion that defendant owed a legal duty here “enforces a public policy that prevents harm to third persons” and that the imposition of this duty places only a “slight” burden on members of the public. Ante at 190. Not only does it place more than a “slight” burden on defendant, for one, but such a formulation of tort law replaces traditional understandings of causation with an amorphous notion of a “public policy” for which Judge Kelly cannot cite authority. Defendant is entitled to an assessment of his conduct based upon his individual responsibility for harm done, not based upon some unknown and unknowable “public policy that prevents harm to third persons.” A “plaintiff sues in [his] own right for a wrong personal to [him] and not as the vicarious beneficiary of a breach of duty to another.” Palsgraf, supra at 344. Judge Kelly jettisons a critical restraint in support of the rule of law — personal responsibility — and substitutes an indiscernible “public policy” to which defendant’s interests are to be subordinated. As Justice Riley observed in her dissent in Falcon v Memorial Hosp, 436 Mich 443, 490-491; 462 NW2d 44 (1990):
Imperfect as it may be, our legal system attempts to ascertain facts to arrive at the truth. To protect the integrity of that goal, there must be some degree of certainty regarding causation .... To dispense with this requirement is to abandon the truth-seeking function of the law. . . . [T]ort *204law should not operate by the same principles that govern lotteries and insurance policies. If the acts of the defendants did not actually cause plaintiff’s injuries, then there is no rational justification for requiring defendants to bear the cost of plaintiff’s damages.
“ ‘Proof of negligence in the air . . . will not do.’ ” Palsgraf, supra at 341, quoting Pollock, Torts (11th ed), p 455.
Judge Kelly’s conclusion would also expand sharply the duty of an individual to protect others from the criminal acts of a third party. “As a general rule, there is no duty to protect against the criminal acts of a third person absent a special relationship between the defendant and the plaintiff or the defendant and the third person.” Babula, supra at 49. See also Bell & Hudson, PC v Buhl Realty Co, 185 Mich App 714, 718-719; 462 NW2d 851 (1990) (finding the familial relationship to be insufficient to impose a duty upon a defendant to protect others from another family member’s wrongful acts).6 Defendant had no reason to anticipate that his son would commit a criminal act, engaged in no “common undertaking” with his son, Farwell v Keaton, 396 Mich 281, 292; 240 NW2d 217 (1976) (plurality opinion), and did not cause the decedent to rely upon him in any manner. For Judge Kelly repeatedly to cite the son’s mental problems as a warrant for imposing extraordinary liability upon defendant, notwithstanding a lack of evidence that these problems had ever before mani*205fested themselves in violence, is to rationalize a conclusion that cannot stand otherwise on the basis of traditional tort principles.
The decedent’s family has undergone a terrible tragedy, but it was defendant’s son, not defendant, who was responsible for this tragedy and who must be held accountable. By holding defendant legally responsible for the demons of his adult child, Judge Kelly further compounds this tragedy. In the process, traditional notions of individual responsibility are also eroded a bit further. I would find that the trial court appropriately granted summary disposition for the defendant.

 Judge Kelly cites Buczkowski v McKay, 441 Mich 96; 490 NW2d 330 (1992), for the proposition that considerations other than foreseeability are usually more important in determining whether a duty exists. The Buczkowski Court supported this point by quoting from Samson v Saginaw Professional Bldg, Inc, 393 Mich 393, 406; 224 NW2d 843 (1975): “ ‘[T]he mere fact that an event may be foreseeable does not impose a duty upon the defendant to take some kind of action accordingly.’ ” Buczkowski, supra at 101. Thus, the Buczkowski Court indicates that foreseeability is a necessary condition of duty, but not always a sufficient condition to establish duty. That foreseeability alone is insufficient to establish duty does not mean that a lack of foreseeability is insufficient to establish a lack of duty. Accordingly, Buczkowski does not undermine the analysis here that focuses on the unforeseeability of the decedent’s death at the time defendant handed the gun to his son in concluding that defendant owed no duty to the decedent.

 Judge Kelly asserts that I would “wait until the first person was injured before imposing a duty on defendant.” Ante at 191. Such an observation illustrates the majority’s confusion over how to approach cases such as this one. The fact that a tragic injury has occurred should not *199obscure the fact that in analyzing defendant’s responsibility for such an injury, the starting point is the foreseeability that such an injury would occur. Negligence lawsuits will frequently involve tragic injuries. Our task is not to fashion a rule that will hold the greatest number of persons potentially responsible; rather, it is to determine which persons are properly held responsible. In fact, there may well be many cases in which, “until the first person [is] injured,” it would be unfair to hold a person responsible for an injury that was unforeseeable before that time (i.e., no legal duty to the victim existed).

 That the degree of a defendant’s moral blame may be one factor in determining his legal duty to another is a distinct proposition from that which replaces the traditional negligence focus upon cause with a focus upon a defendant’s alleged moral blameworthiness.

 Judge Kelly states that “[d]espite his knowledge of his son’s mental instability and his awareness of the neighborhood conflict,” ante at 188, *202defendant handed the firearm to his son. Given that the neighborhood conflict ended shortly afterwards without incident, the gist of defendant’s wrongdoing, as the majority sees it, is his recognition of his son’s mental problems. However, defendant is given no credit for what also might have been his recognition that his son’s mental problems, debilitating as they were, had never before evidenced that his son was any more capable of killing another human being than any other father’s son.

 With regard to defendant’s alleged “moral blame,” had the son truly been in physical danger as his urgent call for the firearm may have reasonably suggested to the father — the son had never made such a demand before and had experienced a weapon being brandished against him in the past in the neighborhood — such a characterization would not be fair. If the firearm was handed to his son under circumstances reasonably perceived to be related to his son’s self-defense, defendant’s action would not be blameworthy. It can only be viewed as such if defendant knew that his son had no defensive need of a weapon — this conclusion might conceivably be drawn from the fact that the son was immediately outside the *203house when he demanded the firearm — or that he knew his son to be the type of person who should never be in the possession of a firearm, at least not when agitated. However, even if we determine that defendant properly deserves some “moral blame” for his action, this is not the equivalent of being legally responsible.

 The majority opinion seeks to distinguish Bell & Hudson and concludes that the “special relationship” doctrine is “inapplicable” in this case. Even if this were so, to find that the doctrine is “inapplicable” is not tantamount to affirmatively finding that defendant should be held accountable for the criminal acts of a third party.