Martinez v. Lazaroff

• Decision Date: 20 November 1979
• Citation: 399 N.E.2d 1148,424 N.Y.S.2d 126,48 N.Y.2d 819
• Parties: , 399 N.E.2d 1148 Harold MARTINEZ, an Infant by His Mother and Natural Guardian, Blanca Martinez et al., Appellants, v. Murray LAZAROFF et al., Respondents.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 126

424 N.Y.S.2d 126

48 N.Y.2d 819, 399 N.E.2d 1148

Harold MARTINEZ, an Infant by His Mother and Natural Guardian, Blanca Martinez et al., Appellants, v. Murray LAZAROFF et al., Respondents.

Court of Appeals of New York.

Nov. 20, 1979.

Herman B. Glaser and Helen B. Stoller, New York City, for appellants.

James M. O'Brien, New York City, for respondents.

OPINION OF THE COURT MEMORANDUM.

The order of the Appellate Division should be affirmed, with costs.

We agree that, as a matter of law, the failure of defendants to supply their tenants with hot water was not the proximate or legal cause of the injuries suffered by the infant plaintiff (Rivera v. City of New York, 11 N.Y.2d 856, 227 N.Y.S.2d 676, 182 N.E.2d 284; cf. Pagan v. Goldberger, 51 A.D.2d 508, 382 N.Y.S.2d 549; see Prosser, Torts (4th ed.), § 42, p. 244). In this instance it was not the failure to supply hot water which was the direct cause of the injuries; the causal connection between the two was attenuated. The failure to furnish hot water gave rise to intervention on the part of the infant's father to provide a substitute supply of hot water. But that action was not the direct cause of the injuries either. The injuries occurred when the father was transporting a pot of boiling water from the substitute source and the infant plaintiff came out of the bedroom and bumped into him. The intervention of the father brought about injuries to his son which were entirely different in character from any that would have resulted from the failure to supply hot water alone, and those injuries cannot be classified as normally to have been expected to ensue from the landlord's dereliction.

MEYER, Judge (dissenting).

The majority's conclusion that defendants are entitled to summary judgment because as a matter of law defendant landlord's failure to supply hot water was not the proximate cause of plaintiff's injury is, in my view, contrary to the policy considerations concerning proximate cause and foreseeability previously espoused by this court and to the legislative purpose enunciated by section 78 of the Multiple Dwelling Law. I, therefore, respectfully dissent.

The question on defendants' motion for summary judgment is whether construing the facts in the light most favorable to plaintiffs there remains an issue for the trier of fact, not how that issue would be determined by us were we the fact finders. Those facts are that plaintiff, Harold Martinez, then five years of age, was injured on May 3, 1975 when he ran out of the bedroom in his parents' apartment and collided with a pot of hot water his father was carrying. As a result he suffered third degree burns over much of his body, permanent scarring and functional deformity. His father was carrying in the pot, from the kitchen to the bathroom, water which he had heated on the kitchen stove because the hot water boiler was broken. It had been out of repair for more than two weeks prior to Harold's injury, a fact which had been reported both to defendants and to city officials. Indeed, the breakdown which resulted in Harold's injury was but the latest in a series of breakdowns stretching over a period of 15 months, about which tenants of the building had likewise complained to defendants and city officials and concerning which violations had been issued. For purposes of the motion defendants do not dispute that the boiler was broken, that there was no hot water and that they had notice of the condition. Yet Harold Martinez' injuries are not to be compensated because, the majority concludes, they are not "normally to have been expected to ensue from the landlord's dereliction" and because "the intervention of the father brought about injuries to his son which were entirely different in character from any that would have resulted from failure to supply hot water alone."

To make proximate cause turn upon the character of injury suffered is a fallacious concept, inconsistent with our prior holdings. In Matter of People (Guardian Cas. Co.), 253 App.Div. 360, 2 N.Y.S.2d 232, affd. 278 N.Y. 674, 16 N.E.2d 397 the injury complained of occurred as follows: defendants, driving a taxicab and a private car collided with one another, and the taxicab came to rest against a stoop, dislodging one of the stones. Plaintiff, the operator of a laundry in the building, was called to the scene. When a tow truck attempted to pull the cab away from the stoop, the stone fell from the stoop, killing plaintiff. Although the injury was obviously different in kind from that which would have resulted from simple negligent driving, nevertheless, both drivers were held liable. In Parvi v. City of Kingston, 41 N.Y.2d 553, 394 N.Y.S.2d 161, 362 N.E.2d 960 plaintiff was injured by an automobile when he wandered on to the highway. The negligence of the police officer there involved was in picking plaintiff up in the City of Kingston, intoxicated, and leaving him on its outskirts on a golf course, presumably to sleep it off. Again the injury suffered was wholly different from what would have resulted (illness, exposure) from the officer's negligent act considered by itself. So, also, a negligent defendant is liable for the full consequences of the medical malpractice of plaintiff's treating physician notwithstanding that those consequences may differ very substantially from the injuries inflicted by the negligent defendant (Milks v. McIver, 264 N.Y. 267, 190 N.E. 487).

Essentially the problem is not one of causation but of policy concerning the point beyond which responsibility should not be imposed (Ventricelli v. Kinney Car System Rent A Car, 45 N.Y.2d 950, 952, 411 N.Y.S.2d 555, 383 N.E.2d 1149; Pagan v. Goldberger, 51 A.D.2d 508, 382 N.Y.S.2d 549; Prosser, Torts (4th ed.), § 44, p. 270; 1 N.Y. P.J.I.2d 212). As the Comment to P.J.I. puts it "The issue is at what point is a defendant whose negligent act or omission has contributed to an injury to be relieved of liability by reason of the fact that after his act or omission a new and independent cause comes into operation?"

Traditionally, the answer to that question has turned on whether the intervening act is one that flows naturally from the original wrongful act or could reasonably be foreseen, which has generally been held to be a jury question (Parvi v. City of Kingston, 41 N.Y.2d 553, 560, 394 N.Y.S.2d 161, 165, 362 N.E.2d 960, 965, Supra ). To be considered in determining the issue, we are told by subdivision (c) of section 442 of the Restatement, Torts 2d, is "the fact that the intervening force is operating independently of any situation created by the actor's negligence, or, on the other hand, is or is not a normal result of such a situation". From section 443 and its Comment and section 447 we learn that "The intervention of a force which is a normal consequence of a situation created by the actor's negligent conduct is not a superseding cause of harm which such conduct has been a substantial factor in bringing about" (§ 443), it is not necessary that the third person's act be "reasonable" (Ibid., Comment A ), that the original actor may be liable even though the third person acts negligently (§ 447), and that the word "normal" is Not used in the sense of usual, foreseeable or to be expected, but means rather "that the court or jury, looking at the matter after the event, and therefore knowing the situation which existed when the new force intervened, does not regard its intervention as so extraordinary as to fall outside the class or normal events" (§ 443, Comment B ; § 447).

New York courts have consistently applied these principles: in Gardner v. Fleckenstein, 3 N.Y.2d 812, 166 N.Y.S.2d 10, 144 N.E.2d 649, to hold a homeowner who had left paraffin wax heating on a stove liable to plaintiff who was walking on the lawn when a workman on the premises, seeing flames in the kitchen, seized the flaming wax pot and threw it into the yard, burning plaintiff; in Miller v. Board of Educ., 291 N.Y. 25, 50 N.E.2d 529, to hold a board of education liable for failure to repair a fire escape door, though plaintiff would not have been injured had the teacher not failed to supervise plaintiff's play; in Parvi v. City of Kingston (supra), to hold the city liable for the police officer's negligence, even though plaintiff would not have been injured had a car not arrived on the highway at the same time and place as he; in Foley v. State of New York, 265 App.Div. 682, 41 N.Y.S.2d 256, to hold the State liable for failure to replace a burned out bulb in a traffic light, even though plaintiff would not have been injured had the drivers of the cars which collided not been negligent.

Against the background of these cases and the Restatement formulations quoted and referred to above, it is difficult to understand the majority's conclusion that there is here no question for the jury. Surely it cannot be said that the act of Renaldo Martinez, Harold's father, in heating water on the stove in the kitchen and carrying it to the bathroom for purposes of cleanliness was other than a normal consequence of defendants' failure to keep the hot water boiler in repair, or that in view of the well-known...