Eli Witt Cigar & Tobacco Co. v. Matatics

• Decision Date: 14 December 1951
• Parties: ELI WITT CIGAR & TOBACCO CO. v. MATATICS.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

Page 549

55 So.2d 549

ELI WITT CIGAR & TOBACCO CO. v. MATATICS.

Supreme Court of Florida, Special Division B.

Dec. 14, 1951.

Dixon, DeJarnette & Bradford, Miami, for appellant.

Ted P. Galatis and Richard R. Kirsch, Fort Lauderdale, for appellee.

ROBERTS, Justice.

This is an appeal from a verdict and judgment entered in favor of plaintiff in a suit instituted by him in the court below to recover for personal injuries alleged to have been caused by the negligence of defendant's employee.

The accident occurred when plaintiff, while riding on a motorcycle, collided with a car being driven by defendant's employee. As a result thereof, plaintiff suffered a brain concussion and other injuries, and was hospitalized for eight days. He was then released, and was apparently making a rapid recovery. Some three weeks after the accident, however, the plaintiff climbed up a ladder into an attic over his garage to put away some luggage, suffered a dizzy spell while trying to descend, and fell to the concerte floor of the garage. This fall resulted in an injury to his spinal cord which caused a complete and permanent paralysis in his lower extremities and partial and permanent paralysis in his upper extremities.

The principal question here presented is whether the evidence is sufficient to show that the original accident is the proximate cause of the injuries and paralysis resulting from the plaintiff's second accident. We think that this question must be answered in the affirmative.

The defendant does not here question the jury's finding that the negligence of its employee was the proximate cause of the accident resulting in plaintiff's brain concussion, nor does it deny liability for the brain concussion; it contends, however, that it is not responsible for the damages resulting from the second accident on the ground that the evidence showed only that the plaintiff's dizzy spells were a 'merely possible' rather than a 'natural and probable' result of the brain concussion, citing Cone v. Inter County Telephone & Telegraph Company, Fla., 40 So.2d 148, 149.

We do not think the Cone case is authority for such a contention. While it is the rule, as stated in that case that 'when the loss is not a direct result of the negligent act complained of, or does not follow in natural ordinary sequence from such act but is merely a possible, as distinguished from a natural and probable, result of the negligent, recovery will not be allowed,' we do not think that such rule is applicable to a determination of the particular question of whether the plaintiff's dizzy spells were caused by the brain concussion. The plaintiff testified that he had never suffered dizzy spells prior to the first accident, that he began to suffer such spells immediately thereafter, and that he had such a spell only three or four days prior to the second accident. It was also shown by the expert testimony of a physician that a loss of equilibrium could result from a brain concussion. We think that such evidence fairly warranted an inference of proximate cause and effect between the brain concussion and the dizzy spells, under the authority of Southern States Power Company v. Clark, 181 Fla. 521, 159 So. 881. See also Potts v. Mulligan, 141 Fla. 685, 193 So. 767.

This court has not heretofore considered the question of 'proximate cause' under circumstances similar to those existing in the case at bar. The rule applicable to such a situation is, however, stated in the Restatement of Torts, Section 460, page 1220, as follows: 'If the negligent actor is liable for an injury which impairs the physical condition of another's body, the actor is also liable for harm sustained in a subsequent accident which would not have...