Iowa Supreme Court Adopts “Risk Standard” For Determining Proximate Cause in Negligence Cases

November 25, 2009 | Roger McEowen

Every negligent tort case contains four elements that a plaintiff must establish in order to prevail – (1) duty (2) breach (3) causation and (4) damages.  The defendant must have had a duty to act in a certain way towards the plaintiff, must have breached that duty, and the breach of the duty must have caused the plaintiff’s damages.  There usually isn’t any question about the breach or damages elements – those are typically self-evident in most cases.  Sometimes a question does arise concerning the duty element.  But, most of the controversy in any given negligent tort case is commonly focused on the causation element.  Did the defendant’s breach of the duty owed to the plaintiff actually cause the plaintiff’s damages?  If so, how is causation to be determined?  Was it the direct cause or were other factors involved?  Those questions came up in this case, and the Iowa Supreme Court changed the rule of law for determining causation in negligent tort cases.

The defendants lived in rural Madison County on a gravel road.  At the end of the summer, they took apart their trampoline, but left the trampoline parts lay unsecured on the ground – about 10-15 yards from the road.  In mid-September, a storm came through the area on a Saturday night and Sunday morning and blew the parts into the road.  On Sunday morning, Pastor Charlie, a United Methodist circuit-riding preacher encountered the parts.  But, Pastor Charlie wasn’t riding a horse, he was traveling in his automobile in a manner that didn’t allow him enough time to avoid the parts.  Pastor Charlie swerved, went into the ditch and rolled his vehicle several times.  The noise from the accident awoke the defendants and they discovered their trampoline parts in the road and Pastor Charlie in the ditch.  They provided assistance to Pastor Charlie and removed their trampoline parts from the road.  But, Pastor Charlie wasn’t in the mood to treat the defendants as he would want them to treat him or to turn the other cheek – he sued.     

At a trial court hearing, Pastor Charlie claimed that the defendants were negligent and breached both statutory and common law duties in allowing their trampoline parts to obstruct the road.  But, the trial court disagreed noting that the defendants didn’t breached any duty that was owed and that Pastor Charlie’s damages were not the proximately caused by the defendants’ negligence – that is, it wasn’t reasonably foreseeable that disassembled trampoline parts laying in a yard near a road would blow into the road and result in the damages that Pastor Charlie suffered.  So, the trial court granted summary judgment for the defendants.  But, Pastor Charlie persisted.  He appealed and the Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed.  But, Pastor Charlie still wasn’t done with the legal system - he wanted the Iowa Supreme Court to review the case.  

Upon review, the Court first addressed Iowa Code §318.3.  That provision says that a person “shall not place, or cause to be placed, an obstruction within any highway right-of way.”  The Court determined, for various reasons, that the provision only addressed intentional conduct and did not concern unintentional or negligent behavior.  So, Pastor Charlie couldn’t win based on Iowa statutory law.  As for Pastor Charlie’s common law negligence claims, the Court went through the standard duty, breach, causation analysis.  As for the duty element, the court reasoned that it should not be tied to foreseeability of harm, as the lower courts had done.  Instead, the Court determined that the defendants had a duty to exercise reasonable care to keep their premises in a manner that would not create hazards on adjoining roadways.

Note:  The Supreme Court’s rejection of the notion that foreseeability of harm is to be used to determine duty and replacing it with a duty to exercise reasonable care appears to be superfluous.  A determination of whether a defendant exercised reasonable care will, undoubtedly, turn on whether a jury believes the resulting harm  was foreseeable.  As such, the Court’s real beef appears to be with the fact that the   lower courts did not let the case get to the jury.    

So, while the Court said the defendants breached a duty owed to Pastor Charlie, did that breach cause his damages?  The trial court had determined that there was no causal connection because it wasn’t foreseeable that the trampoline parts would end up in the road.  Again, the Supreme Court determined that the causation issue should have gone to the jury – this wasn’t a case where there was absolutely no question about cause and effect.  The Court then engaged in a lengthy professorial discussion of legal and proximate causation and how the Restatement of Torts deals with the issue.  The Court jettisoned the foreseeability test for determining proximate causation and replaced it with the “risk standard.”  Iowa law had previously applied the Restatement (Second) of Torts test which specifies that “[t]he actor’s negligent conduct is a legal cause of harm to another if (a) his conduct is a substantial factor in bringing about the harm, and (b) there is no rule of law relieving the actor from liability.”  The “risk standard” requires juries to consider the range of harms (i.e., foreseeable harms) risked by the defendant’s conduct and whether the plaintiff’s injury was a result of any of those risks.  

In other words, under the new standard, a jury will still have to determine how foreseeable the risk of harm to the plaintiff was from the defendant’s conduct.  In reality, the Court’s opinion will change nothing concerning how juries decide the causation issue in negligent tort cases.  Remember that the essence of proximate causation is reasonable foreseeability – the Court can’t change that no matter how many pages they write.  Theory is one thing, but application of that theory is entirely different.  

So Pastor Charlie gets his day in court.  But, he will have to show that the harm to him was a reasonably foreseeable result of the defendants’ conduct.  He will also have to overcome the common law rule that a driver of a vehicle must operate the vehicle at all times in a manner that allows the operator to avoid obstructions.  But, perhaps the larger question for Pastor Charlie is what Francis Asbury would have done if faced with a similar situation.  For rural landowners in general, the big question is whether the Court’s opinion will increase potential liability for unforeseen events with respect to personal property on the premises.  Thompson v. Kaczinski, et al., 774 N.W.2d 829 (Iowa Sup. Ct. 2009).