Brewer v. Teano

• Decision Date: 01 December 1995
• Docket Number: No. B082617,B082617
• Citation: 47 Cal.Rptr.2d 348,40 Cal.App.4th 1024
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: , 95 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 9172, 95 Daily Journal D.A.R. 15,891 Jeffrey R. BREWER, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Anita TEANO, as Executor, etc., Defendant and Respondent.

Page 348

47 Cal.Rptr.2d 348

40 Cal.App.4th 1024, 95 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 9172,

95 Daily Journal D.A.R. 15,891

Jeffrey R. BREWER, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Anita TEANO, as Executor, etc., Defendant and Respondent.

No. B082617.

Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 4, California.

Dec. 1, 1995.

[40 Cal.App.4th 1026] Donald T. Whitson, San Diego, for Plaintiff and Appellant.

Thomas & Price, and Christian E. Sanne, Glendale, for Defendant and Respondent.

EPSTEIN, Acting Presiding Justice.

According to plaintiff's complaint, together with reasonable inferences from the allegations in that pleading, William P. Teano negligently and recklessly drove his car so that it repeatedly collided with a car driven by the plaintiff, Jeffrey R. Brewer. Afraid that he would be assaulted by Teano if he pulled over and stopped, plaintiff left the scene. A bystander, seeing him leave the scene of the accident, reported these events to police. As a result, plaintiff was arrested for hit-and-run. Later, criminal charges were filed against him, and he was held to answer for the felony grade of that crime. He was not convicted. Teano had died, and plaintiff sued his estate, the respondent in this appeal. Plaintiff sought compensation for damage to his car, for physical injury and emotional distress, and for expenses incurred as a result of the ensuing arrest and prosecution.

We conclude that the decision of the prosecutor to file felony charges against plaintiff, and of the magistrate to hold him to answer those charges, were superseding acts for which Teano's estate is not liable. We also conclude that plaintiff has pleaded a viable action against the estate for damage to his property and personal injury and emotional distress inflicted as a result of the collision. Finally, we conclude that his pleading does not provide an adequate basis to assess the superseding cause issues that bear on damages claimed on account of the arrest.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL SUMMARY

The case reaches us on pleadings, defendant's general demurrer having been sustained without leave to amend. Given that The following appears from the amended complaint (Negligence), the charging pleading.

                posture, we take as admitted (for purposes of testing the sufficiency of the pleading) all well-pleaded averments in the complaint. 1  (Daar v. Yellow Cab Co.  (1967) 67 Cal.2d 695, 713, 63 Cal.Rptr. 724, 433 P.2d 732.)
                

On or about March 14, 1992, at 12:30 in the morning, as plaintiff was driving his vehicle on Temple Boulevard in Los Angeles County, Teano "so negligently, carelessly, recklessly and unlawfully managed, drove and operated [his vehicle] along and on Temple Boulevard in a generally westerly direction so as to cause it to repeatedly collide with plaintiff's automobile and to cause the injuries and damages hereinafter described." As a result of these collisions, plaintiff was afraid that if he stopped his car, Teano would assault him. He reacted instinctively and left the scene in order to find an area of safety, "thereby resulting in plaintiff being arrested and prosecuted for a felony." As a result of his vehicle being repeatedly struck, he also sustained physical and mental pain and suffering. Permanent injuries resulted from the encounter.

Plaintiff also alleged that he suffered pain and suffering as a result of his arrest and prosecution for a felony, presumably hit-and-run. (Veh.Code § 20001.) He asserts that he was required to retain counsel for his defense of the criminal charges, that he was delayed in graduating and beginning his career, and that he lost his job. He also sought damages for medical care and treatment, and $487.50 for damages to his vehicle.

Teano's estate (Estate) demurred to the amended complaint, as it had to the original pleading. It was successful both times, the demurrer being sustained without leave on the second occasion. ² The second demurrer was sustained on the ground the complaint failed to state a cause of action "in that it fails to state a causal link between the damages suffered" by plaintiff and the actions of Teano. A judgment (order of dismissal) in favor of the Estate was entered, followed by plaintiff's timely notice of appeal.

DISCUSSION

I

We begin with a brief treatment of two obvious bases for relief, adequately pleaded in the amended complaint.

The first is damage to plaintiff's vehicle resulting from the collisions which, in turn, were alleged to have been caused by Teano's negligent driving. The Estate does not challenge the actionability of these allegations; its only response is that the amount of the property damage claimed, under $500, is within the jurisdiction of the municipal court. (Code Civ.Proc., § 86, subd. (a).) It asks that this part of the lawsuit be transferred to that court pursuant to section 396 of the Code of Civil Procedure. Defendant failed to make that request to the trial court. Nevertheless, as a jurisdictional claim it remains cognizable on appeal. Its deficiency is that the property claim does not stand alone, but is joined with personal injury claims that also are independent from the allegations about the arrest and criminal proceedings.

As we have discussed, plaintiff claims the Teano vehicle repeatedly and forcibly collided with the car plaintiff was driving, and that as a result he "suffered great mental, physical and nervous pain and suffering," resulting in "permanent injuries."

Defendant argues this is an insufficient pleading because it alleges no more than that Teano "negligently inflicted emotional distress ('NIED') where the alleged injury is accompanied by neither physical impact nor other injury." As such, it argues, damages for emotional distress are precluded by the doctrine stated in Dillon v. Legg (1968) 68 Cal.2d 728, 740, 69 Cal.Rptr. 72, 441 P.2d 912 and Thing v. La Chusa (1989) 48 Cal.3d 644, 257 Cal.Rptr. 865, 771 P.2d 814.

These are the well-known "bystander" cases. In negligence cases, policy considerations underpinning the concept of duty require that damages for emotional distress caused by observation of a negligently caused injury be limited to persons closely related to the injury victim, who are present at the time of the injury-producing event and aware that it is causing injury to the victim, and who suffer emotional distress as a result. (Thing v. La Chusa, supra, 48 Cal.3d at pp. 647, 666-668, 257 Cal.Rptr. 865, 771 P.2d 814.)

This is not a bystander case. According to his pleading, plaintiff was the victim of Teano's negligent driving; he was not a mere observer. Physical impact was alleged. Finally, and fundamentally, plaintiff alleged both emotional and physical injury as a result of Teano's forcible collisions with the car plaintiff was driving. That is a sufficient conventional pleading for physical and emotional injury.

II

The Estate contends that, as a matter of law, it cannot be liable for damages flowing from the criminal prosecution of appellant. (We shall review the claim for damages arising out of appellant's arrest in the final section of our discussion.) The issue concerns application of the doctrine of superseding cause to the pleaded facts in this case.

The codified rule is that "[f]or the breach of an obligation not arising from contract, the measure of damages ... is the amount which will compensate for all the detriment proximately caused thereby, whether it could have been anticipated or not." (Civ.Code, § 3333.)

Causation in the law of negligence is not determined by a linear projection from a "but for" premise. Instead, it is expressed in terms of "foreseeability" and is limited by the policy that cause must be "proximate." The problem is complex, and has bedeviled many. (See State Comp. Ins. Fund v. Ind. Acc. Com. (1959) 176 Cal.App.2d 10, 20, 1 Cal.Rptr. 73; Akers v. Kelley Co., Inc. (1985) 173 Cal.App.3d 633, 658, 219 Cal.Rptr. 513; and Maupin v. Widling (1987) 192 Cal.App.3d 568, 573, 237 Cal.Rptr. 521.) It was discussed in Ballard v. Uribe (1986) 41 Cal.3d 564, 224 Cal.Rptr. 664, 715 P.2d 624, in which our Supreme Court acknowledged the confusion that had arisen over the respective roles played by the court and jury in dealing with the foreseeability concept in tort doctrine. In some contexts it is a question of fact for the jury, and in others a "part of the calculus to which a court looks in defining the boundaries of 'duty.' " " '[D]uty' is not an immutable fact of nature, " 'but only an expression of the sum total of those considerations of policy which lead the law to say that the particular plaintiff is entitled to protection.' " " The foreseeability of a particular kind of harm is significant in the duty calculus, "but a court's task--in determining 'duty'--is not to decide whether a particular plaintiff's injury was reasonably foreseeable in light of a particular defendant's conduct, but rather to evaluate more generally whether the category of negligent conduct at issue is sufficiently likely to result in the kind of harm experienced that liability may appropriately be imposed on the negligent party." By contrast, the jury considers foreseeability in two more focused, fact-specific settings: likelihood or foreseeability of injury in deciding whether defendant's conduct was negligent in the first place, and whether the negligence was a proximate or legal cause of plaintiff's injury. (41 Cal.3d at p. 572, fn. 6, 224 Cal.Rptr. 664, 715 P.2d 624.)

These are policy concepts, and they underlie the special application of foreseeability involved in this case: the interplay of intervening and supervening causes. The rules are set out in the Restatement Second of Torts, which have been accepted as law in California. (Stewart v. Cox (1961) 55 Cal.2d 857, 864, 13 Cal.Rptr. 521, 362 P.2d 345.) We turn to the principal Restatement provisions.

"An intervening force is one which actively operates in producing harm to another after the actor's negligent act or omission has been committed." (...