People v. Rideout

• Court: Court of Appeal of Michigan
• Writing for the Court: Sawyer
• Citation: People v. Rideout, 727 N.W.2d 630, 272 Mich. App. 602 (Mich. App. 2006)
• Decision Date: 26 October 2006
• Docket Number: Docket No. 261233.
• Parties: PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Kevin John RIDEOUT, Defendant-Appellant.

727 N.W.2d 630

272 Mich. App. 602

PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Kevin John RIDEOUT, Defendant-Appellant.

Docket No. 261233.

Court of Appeals of Michigan.

Submitted September 6, 2006, at Grand Rapids.

Decided October 26, 2006, at 9:10 a.m.

Released for Publication February 20, 2007.

Michael A. Cox, Attorney General, Thomas L. Casey, Solicitor General, William A. Forsyth, Kent County Prosecuting Attorney, and Timothy K. McMorrow, Chief Appellate Attorney, for the people.

Haehnel & Phelan (by Freeman M. Haehnel), Grand Rapids, for the defendant.

Before: SAWYER, P.J., and FITZGERALD and O'CONNELL, JJ.

SAWYER, P.J.

Defendant was convicted, following a jury trial, of operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated (OWI) or while visibly impaired (OWVI) and thereby causing death.¹ He was sentenced to serve 3 to 15 years in prison. He now appeals and we reverse and remand.

At 2:00 a.m. on November 23, 2003, defendant was driving his sport utility vehicle (SUV) east on 17 Mile Road in northern Kent County. He attempted to turn north onto Edgerton Avenue and drove into the path of an oncoming car driven by Jason Reichelt. Reichelt's car hit defendant's SUV and spun 180 degrees, coming to rest on the centerline of 17 Mile Road. The SUV came to rest on the side of the road. It was later determined that defendant had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.16, which is twice the legal limit.²

Reichelt and his passenger, Jonathan Keiser, were not seriously injured, but Reichelt's car was severely damaged and the headlights stopped working. Both men left the car and walked to the SUV to determine if anyone was injured. After speaking briefly with defendant, the two men walked back to Reichelt's car. Reichelt indicated that he was aware that oncoming cars could hit his darkened car and that he wanted to determine if he could turn on the flashers. As Reichelt and Keiser stood by the car, an oncoming car driven by Tonya Welch hit Keiser, killing him.

At the center of this appeal is the issue of causation. Defendant argues that not only did the trial court improperly instruct the jury on causation, there was also insufficient evidence of causation to establish defendant's guilt. Because the two issues are intertwined with the question of what must be proven to establish causation in such a case, we shall analyze both issues together beginning with a determination of what the prosecutor must show to establish causation.

As the Supreme Court discussed in People v. Schaefer,³ causation consists of two components:

In criminal jurisprudence, the causation element of an offense is generally comprised of two components: factual cause and proximate cause. The concept of factual causation is relatively straightforward. In determining whether a defendant's conduct is a factual cause of the result, one must ask, "but for" the defendant's conduct, would the result have occurred? If the result would not have occurred absent the defendant's conduct, then factual causation exists.

The existence of factual causation alone, however, will not support the imposition of criminal liability. Proximate causation must also be established. As we noted in [People v.] Tims[, 449 Mich. 83, 96, 534 N.W.2d 675 (1995)], proximate causation is a "legal colloquialism." It is a legal construct designed to prevent criminal liability from attaching when the result of the defendant's conduct is viewed as too remote or unnatural. Thus, a proximate cause is simply a factual cause "of which the law will take cognizance."⁴

We initially note that there is no dispute at this point that defendant was intoxicated and that his driving was the cause of the initial accident.⁵ Furthermore, there is no argument that defendant's driving was the factual or "but-for" cause of the second accident. This analysis is relatively straightforward: but for defendant causing the initial accident, the subsequent accident would not have occurred.

Of course, factual causation is relatively easy to establish. As the court in Welch v. State observed, "[m]ankind might still be in Eden, but for Adam's biting an apple."⁶ But the question whether defendant is the proximate cause of the subsequent accident, and thus of the victim's death, is not so easily resolved. Schaefer discussed this requirement in further detail:

For a defendant's conduct to be regarded as a proximate cause, the victim's injury must be a "direct and natural result" of the defendant's actions. In making this determination, it is necessary to examine whether there was an intervening cause that superseded the defendant's conduct such that the causal link between the defendant's conduct and the victim's injury was broken. If an intervening cause did indeed supersede the defendant's act as a legally significant causal factor, then the defendant's conduct will not be deemed a proximate cause of the victim's injury.

The standard by which to gauge whether an intervening cause supersedes, and thus severs the causal link, is generally one of reasonable foreseeability. For example, suppose that a defendant stabs a victim and the victim is then taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. If the physician is negligent in providing medical care to the victim and the victim later dies, the defendant is still considered to have proximately caused the victim's death because it is reasonably foreseeable that negligent medical care might be provided. At the same time, gross negligence or intentional misconduct by a treating physician is not reasonably foreseeable, and would thus break the causal chain between the defendant and the victim.

The linchpin in the superseding cause analysis, therefore, is whether the intervening cause was foreseeable based on an objective standard of reasonableness. If it was reasonably foreseeable, then the defendant's conduct will be considered a proximate cause. If, however, the intervening act by the victim or a third party was not reasonably foreseeable — e.g., gross negligence or intentional misconduct — then generally the causal link is severed and the defendant's conduct is not regarded as a proximate cause of the victim's injury or death.⁷

With these basic principles in mind, we conclude that the trial court improperly instructed the jury on the issue of proximate cause. We review claims of instructional error de novo.⁸ The trial court is required to instruct jurors on "all elements of the crime charged and must not exclude consideration of material issues, defenses, and theories for which there is supporting evidence."⁹ Instructions are to be read as a whole and not piecemeal to determine if error requiring reversal occurred.¹⁰ "It is error for the trial court to give an erroneous or misleading jury instruction on an essential element of the offense."¹¹

The trial court gave detailed and extensive instructions on factual causation, including reinforcement of the concept that defendant had to be "a" cause of the accident, but not necessarily "the" cause of the accident. But the trial court's instructions on proximate cause and superseding intervening causes were virtually nonexistent. The trial court did implicitly touch on the issue of proximate cause when it instructed the jury that one of several causes "is a substantial factor in causing a death if, but for that cause's contribution, the death would not have occurred, unless the death was an utterly unnatural result of whatever happened." But the instructions also told the jury that another cause could be a superseding cause only if it was the sole cause:

Now it also necessarily follows that somebody else's conduct, for example, by Mr. Keiser, or by some third party, even if that other conduct was wrong or itself negligent, does not cut off criminal liability unless the other cause was the only cause. Obviously, if somebody else's conduct was the only reason Mr. Keiser died, then it can't possibly be something to which Mr. Rideout contributed.

This is not a correct statement of the law. A superseding intervening cause does not need to be the only cause. Indeed, as the Court noted in Schaefer, while the defendant's conduct in that cause was a factual cause of the accident, the victim's conduct may also have been a cause and, more to the point, potentially a superseding cause.¹² The effect of the trial court's instructions was that the jury could convict defendant if they found him to be a factual cause of the accident and that the jury could find the existence of a superseding intervening cause only if that superseding intervening cause was the only cause of the second accident. The jury was not adequately instructed on the issues of proximate and intervening causes.¹³

This conclusion is enough to set aside defendant's conviction, with directions to the trial court to properly instruct the jury on the causation issue. But we agree with defendant that the problem in this case goes even deeper, because there was insufficient evidence to establish proximate cause at all. We review a claim of insufficient evidence in a criminal trial de novo.¹⁴ We view the evidence in a light most favorable to the prosecution to determine if a rational trier of fact could find beyond a reasonable doubt that the essential elements of the crime were established.¹⁵

The troubling aspect of this case is that the second accident only occurred after Keiser had reached a position of safety (the side of the road) and then chose to reenter the roadway with Reichelt to check on the car. While foreseeability is the "linchpin" of the superseding causation analysis,¹⁶ and it is at least arguably foreseeable that a person involved in an accident would check on his or her vehicle even if it remains on the road, the analysis does not end there. As Professor Dressler discusses in Understanding Criminal Law (3d ed.),¹⁷ there is no universal test for determining if an intervening cause is also a superseding cause:

One early twentieth century scholar...