Wing v. Morse

Citation300 A.2d 491
PartiesClifford WING, Jr. v. Bernard L. MORSE.
Decision Date15 February 1973
CourtSupreme Judicial Court of Maine (US)

Levine, Brody & Levine, by Morton A. Brody, Waterville, for plaintiff.

Locke, Compbell & Chapman, by Jeseph B. Campbell, Augusta, for defendant.

Before DUFRESNE, C. J., and WEBBER, WEATHERBEE, POMEROY, WERNICK, and ARCHIBALD, JJ.

POMEROY, Justice.

Before us for decision is an appeal, timely made, from a judgment entered on a verdict rendered by the jury in a personal injury action.

The jury found the total damages to the plaintiff to be $12,000.00. The jury further found there was contributory fault on the part of the plaintiff and that $200.00 should be deducted from the total damage figure. The Court, acting pursuant to Rule 58, Maine Rules of Civil Procedure, directed judgment be entered for the plaintiff in the sum of $11,800.00. Such judgment was forthwith appropriately entered by the Clerk.

This appeal followed.

We sustain the appeal and order a new trial.

The action arose out of an automobile accident which occurred on Interstate Highway #95 in Bangor, Maine.

The undisputed evidence makes it apparent Interstate Highway #95 at the point where the accident occurred is a 4-lane limited access highway, 2 lanes being utilized for northbound traffic and 2 lanes for southbound traffic. A median strip separated the northbound lane from the southbound lane. The defendant admitted he had attempted to make a U-turn crossing from the northbound lane into the southbound lane across and median strip.

The this constituted a violation of law is not disputed.

It is likewise clear that this negligent action on the part of the defendant was the legal cause of a collision with an automobile to which a house trailer was attached which was proceeding in a southerly direction along the southbound lane of the highway. This caused the automobile and trailer to come to rest with the automobile across the passing lane, so-called, of the southbound lane of the highway and the trailer projecting somewhat into the traveled lane.

Shortly after this collision occurred a State Police officer appeared on the scene and stopped his unmarked police vehicle on the median strip. The police vehicle was equipped with a blue light on its dash. The officer turned on the blue light. A large number of automobiles were traveling in the southbound lane of the highway and by reason of the accident, had been caused to slow down to such an extent a line of vehicles had been formed extending from the scene of the accident back a distance the jury could have concluded was about one-half mile.

It is undisputed that the plaintiff was driving a Ford Diesel tractor with a refrigerated trailer attached. The trailer was loaded with potatoes and the trip had originated in Caribou. The plaintiff's destination was Vassalboro. His testimony on direct examination as to the events immediately prior to the happening of the accident was as follows:

Q Alright, and what happened as you approached the Hogan Interchange or bypassed the Hogan interchange?

A I was in the left hand lane and I was looking to get back into the right hand lane because that is where trucks belong, but the traffic from the streets before I got to the Hogan Road was still to the right of me so I couldn't pull over. I see this traffic up ahead and it seemed to be moving very slow, but as I got closer it wasn't moving at all.

Q Now what did you see? What actually did you see?

A I see these-I see these two cars. One was at quite a right angle to me, and I could see the lights, the tail lights of it.

Q When you say it was at quite a right angle, what do you mean?

A Well it was off-the trial end was off to the side a little ways.

Q And where was the front end?

A The front end was out towards the middle of the road.

Q What else did you see with reference to that automobile?

A I see that it wasn't moving.

Q Did you see another vehicle in the area?

A I didn't notice. They were-there was another vehicle. It didn't look like it was moving, but I wasn't sure of that either.

Q What else did you see?

A So I started slowing down.

Q What else did you see?

A Oh, I see that there was no way for me to get by them and there was no way for me to stop.

Q How far away were you, would you estimate, when you first saw these vehicles in the road?

A Oh, approximately 200 yards.

Q Alright, and then what did you do at that point?

A I applied the brakes.

Q And what else did you do?

A I see that I couldn't stop, and I couldn't pull to the right because of the traffic on the right of me, so I left the road to avoid hitting the cars in the road.

Q You say you left the road. What did you do?

Q I pulled it down into the median strip.

Q Pulled what?

A The truck.

Q Alright. The median strip being the grassy area between the north bound and south bound lanes?

A Right.

Q Alright. Tell us what happened as you pulled it over off the road?

A When I pulled it off the road I figured, well I have had it, but here goes, and I did. I went down into the Median strip and across the service road. When I hit the other side everything just went white and I don't remember too much after that.'

The appellant here urges upon us that the defendant's negligence in attempting to negotiate a U-turn in violation of the law was so remote it cannot be considered a proximate cause of the plaintiff's injury.

From the evidence the jury would be forced to conclude that at least ten minutes elapsed between the happening of the collision, admittedly occasioned by the defendant's attempted U-turn and the accident which occasioned the plaintiff's injuries.

Very few words commonly employed in the law of torts have occasioned as much case law and confusion as the term 'proximate cause.'

The word 'proximate' is a legacy of Lord Chancellor Bacon. Bacon, Maxims of the Law, Reg. 1. 1

When the word 'proximate' was first taken up by the courts, it had connotations of proximity of both time and space. These connotations have long since disappeared. It is a confusing and therefore an unfortunate word because it improperly places emphasis on the physical or mechanical closeness of the cause under investigation and the happening of the event in issue. Of this, most modern authorities are in agreement. See for example, Edgerton, Legal Cause, 72 U.Pa.L.Rev. 211 (1924); Morris, On the Teaching of Legal Cause, 39 Colum.L.Rev. 1087 (1931).

There are other situations in which a 'cause' is clearly near in both point of time and distance, but yet, because of legal policy considerations working in the framework of the particular facts, such cause is not held to be a 'legal cause.' In such cases there is the intervention of an unrelated cause, (unrelated in the sense of not being within the policy considerations) not reasonably foreseeable, which intervening cause is itself an efficient cause. See for example: Curtis v. Jacobson, 142 Me. 351, 54 A.2d 520 (1947).

It is for this reason our Court has defined proximate cause to mean:

'. . . that cause which, in natural and continuous sequence, unbroken by an efficient intervening cause, produces the injury, and without which the result would not have occurred.'

Johnson v. Dubois, Me., 256 A.2d 733, 734 (1969).

In Marsh v. Great Northern Paper Company, 101 Me. 489, 502, 64 A. 844, 850 (1906), it was said:

'Another important rule which must be taken into consideration, and which if (sic) very generally agreed to is that time or distance is not decisive test of proximity of cause. The expression means closeness of causal relation, not nearness in time or distance, although it is undoubtedly true that time and distance, in some cases, may have an important bearing upon the question of causal relation.'

A complete and thorough discussion of the whole question of proximate cause as applied to a situation not substantially unlike that here before us is to be found in an opinion by Chief Judge Magruder in Marshall v. Nugent and Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, 222 F.2d 604, 610-612 (1st Cir. 1955). See also Apanovich v. Wright, 226 F.2d 656 (1st Cir. 1955).

In approaching any problem of proximate cause one must start with the premises that the act or conduct, to be negligent toward another, must involve an unreasonable risk of

(1) causing harm to a class of persons of which the other is a member, and

(2) subjecting the other to ahazard from which the harm results.

Cause, in the philosophic sense, includes each of the substantial number of events without which any happening would not have occurred. Each of the events is a cause in that sense. The effect of many of them, however, is so insignificant that no reasonable mind would ordinarily think of them as causes.

A negligent act, i. e., a violation of the duty to use reasonable care toward another is a legal cause of harm to such other person if

(a) the actor's conduct is a substantial factor in bringing about the harm, and

(b) there is no rule of law relieving the actor from liability because of the manner in which his negligence has resulted in the harm.

Here, in the case before, us, it is clear that as a matter of law this defendant owed a duty to all travelers on the highway to exercise reasonable care toward all such travelers whom he ought reasonably to have had in contemplation as a traveler to be affected by the doing of his negligent act as the time did such act. There was certainly no rule of law relieving him from liability. His failure to deport himself in accordance with the standard of care by which he was bound, was most certainly a substantial factor, though clearly not the only factor, in bringing about this plaintiff's misfortune.

It is also clear the defendant's negligence in attempting to negotiate the U-turn from the northbound lane into the southbound lane caused the collision with the unidentified motor vehicle to which the house trailer was attached. This the defendant concedes in his brief.

The accident in which the plaintiff...

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