Also known as: superseding factors · superseding cause
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
An intervening act or force that prevents an original negligent actor from remaining liable for harm that the negligence helped bring about. The intervention must operate after the negligent conduct and break the chain of legal causation even though the original negligence was a substantial factor in the situation.
Riverfront Hotel left a side entrance lock unrepaired. Elena propped the door open with a rock to assist a guest. An intruder entered and assaulted the guest. The hotel's earlier negligence created only a passive condition, but Elena's affirmative intervention changed the risk in an independent way that a jury could treat as cutting off the hotel's liability.
Summit Gas delayed repair of a known leak under a residential block. Chase attached a grill to a utility line without permission during a festival. The illegal connection ignited the accumulated gas and caused an explosion injuring a bystander. Chase's act was a normal consequence of the situation Summit Gas created, so it did not relieve the gas company of liability.
Select any source to read its text and confirm it supports the definition.
The City of Alexandria placed an unstable sculpture in a high-traffic atrium knowing school groups visited daily. Isabel allowed students to crowd and push the sculpture despite warning signs. The sculpture toppled onto a nearby visitor. Isabel's conduct was not so highly extraordinary that it superseded the museum's antecedent negligence.
Harper failed to discover a recorded easement while examining title for Blue Oak's warehouse purchase. The neighbor later enforced the easement and blocked the planned redevelopment. The neighbor's exercise of the recorded right was a foreseeable consequence of the omitted disclosure and therefore did not supersede Harper's negligence.
Sky Hotels failed to maintain its emergency alarm system. Nina, a guest, heard the alarm and in fear fled down the stairs, pushing another guest who fell and was injured. Nina's act was a normal response to fear created by the hotel's negligence and therefore did not supersede liability.
Birch Media sold unsecured glass bottles in an upper balcony despite warnings about intoxicated patrons leaning over railings. Henry saw a falling bottle and reached to catch it, but it struck a patron below. Henry's normal effort to avert the threatened harm was not a superseding cause of the injury.
A court examines whether the intervening act operated after the original negligence, produced harm different in kind from that threatened by the negligence, or appeared extraordinary rather than normal in light of the circumstances. The analysis also considers whether the original negligence created or increased the foreseeable risk of the very harm that occurred through the intervention.
Supporting sources
No. A criminal act by a third person supersedes only when it is independent of and unforeseeable from the risk created by the original negligence. When the original negligence created or increased the precise risk of criminal exploitation, the criminal act remains within the scope of the original actor's liability.
Supporting sources
Foreseeability weighs against treating an intervening act as superseding. When the original negligence made the type of harm and the manner of its occurrence reasonably foreseeable, the intervening force is treated as a normal consequence rather than a superseding cause.
Supporting sources
Yes, when the storm is extraordinary and produces harm of a kind different from that threatened by the original negligence. An ordinary or foreseeable weather event, however, does not relieve the negligent actor of liability.
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…have been described. They contend that the actions of Blake, the driver of the pickup truck, constituted both an intervening and superseding cause which relieves them of criminal responsibility for Stafford’s death. There is, of course, no statutory provision regarding the effect of an intervening cause of injury as it relates to the…