Palsgrafian Vistas

Novak v. Continental Tire N. Am., No. A149494 (D1d3 Apr. 12, 2018)

Not sure how procedural this is, but it’s interesting nonetheless. 

Plaintiff, who was injured in car accident caused by a blowout, brought a products liability case against the tire manufacturer. Plaintiff’s injuries left him partially immobilized; he used a three-wheeled scooter to get around. Six years later, while awaiting retrial after a reversal of a defense judgment in his case, Plaintiff, on his scooter, was run over in a crosswalk. He died a few days later.

Plaintiff’s heirs amended the complaint to add a wrongful death claim. Their theory was that the bad tire caused the accident, which put Plaintiff in a scooter, which made him vulnerable in the crosswalk, which led to his death when he got run over. The trial court granted SJ on causation, finding that the death was just too remote from the blowout to be proximately caused by it.

The Court of Appeal affirms. It assumes for the sake of argument that the tire was a but-for (aka legal) cause of Plaintiff’s death. But even so, proximate cause could not be established. The evidence showed that the cross-walk incident was largely caused by driver error—had the driver honored the crosswalk, there never would have been any accident. Under the circumstances, Plaintiff’s death was just too attenuated from the product liability issue years beforehand to create a triable issue.

Affirmed.