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Weyerhaeuser Company v. Thermogas Company12/20/2000
vor of the defendant, the appellate court in Wollenhaupt stated:
[The plaintiff] is not claiming that [the defendant] caused the fire that injured him. Instead, the claim is that if [the defendant] had properly serviced [the fire protection system], the fire, whatever its origin, would not have caused [the plaintiff] to suffer severe injury . The origin of the fire in this case was therefore irrelevant.
Again the claim is not that [the defendant] negligently started the fire, but that the fire, whatever its origin, would have been extinguished had the [fire protection system] been properly maintained and, had it been so maintained, [the plaintiff] would not have suffered injury .
If a defendant has a duty to foresee a particular type of harmful force, such as a fire, and guard others against the harm that the force can do, and the defendant fails in this duty, the cause of the fire is irrelevant to the liability of the defendant. Wollenhaupt, 440 N.W.2d at 449-50 (emphasis added).
In the last paragraph of this passage, the court is relying on principles implicating intervening cause, which we think determine the outcome of the issue before us.
An intervening cause is an event that "comes into active operation in producing the result after the negligence of the defendant. 'Intervening' is used in a time sense; it refers to later events." Prosser§ 44, at 301. According to the same authority,
f the intervening cause is one which in ordinary human experience is reasonably to be anticipated under the particular circumstances, the defendant may be negligent, among other reasons, because of failing to guard against it; or the defendant may be negligent only for that reason. Id. at 303.
A defendant cannot be relieved from liability by the fact that the risk, or a substantial or important part of the risk, to which the defendant has subjected the plaintiff has indeed come to pass. Foreseeable intervening forces are within the scope of the original risk, and hence of the defendant's negligence. The courts are quite generally agreed that intervening causes which fall fairly in this category will not supersede the defendant's responsibility. Id. at 303-04; accord Stevens v. Des Moines Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 528 N.W.2d 117, 119 (Iowa 1995).
The court, not the jury, applies the rules restricting a defendant's responsibility under theories of intervening cause. State v. Garcia, 616 N.W.2d 594, 596 (Iowa 2000). When the intervening cause does not supersede the defendant's responsibility, evidence of such cause is not admissible. Id. at 597 (holding that physicians' allegedly "outrageous" treatment of gunshot victim was not sole proximate cause of victim's death, and thus expert testimony that physicians' gross negligence in removing tracheotomy tube from victim was cause of death was not admissible to establish defense of intervening cause in homicide prosecution in which there was substantial evidence that the gunshot wounds were a proximate cause of victim's death).
Here, Weyerhaeuser is not claiming that Thermogas caused the fire. Rather, Weyerhaeuser is claiming that, if the LP tank had not been defective and exploded prematurely when exposed to fire, the fire, whatever its origin, would not have caused Weyerhaeuser to suffer the damage it did suffer.
As mentioned, the federal regulations provide that LP tanks like the one here must not explode when placed in a fire. The same regulations require suppliers of such tanks to periodically inspect LP tanks to ensure they remain safe. The LP tank in question was two and one-half years past its mandatory testing date. Additionally, there was testimony
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