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WASFI v. CHADDHA3/26/1991
ed.) While not a model of clarity, this statement may reasonably be viewed as indicating that Riccio could "only escape" liability for his negligence if the consequences thereof were not reasonably foreseeable, regardless of any negligence on the part of Chaddha.
The last sentence of the charge, stating that Riccio's negligence "would be an intervening cause that broke
the chain of causation between his negligence and the harm suffered by the plaintiff," (emphasis added) was obviously jumbled, but it certainly does not refer to Chaddha or imply that Chaddha's negligence could be a basis for excusing Riccio. This incomprehensible last sentence was not called to the attention of the court by anyone, nor did any party except to the third charge on the ground that it made Chaddha's negligence a basis for excusing Riccio from liability. Such an exception had been voiced after the first charge, which abstractly posed the intervening cause issue of "whether physician A's negligence was an intervening cause between physician B's negligence and the resulting harm or vice versa; and thus determine whether one or the other of the physicians would be relieved from liability for his acts." (Emphasis added.) The second charge, which was in accordance with Wasfi's request, made no reference that could possibly be construed to suggest that Chaddha's negligence could excuse Riccio, nor was any exception taken in that regard. Evidently the parties did not believe that such a basis for finding Riccio not to be liable was implicit in the third charge, because no such exception was taken. The failure of a party to except specifically to a defect in the charge, of course, precludes reliance
upon it as a basis for reversal. Practice Book 315. Wasfi's request to charge, which referred to circumstances under which Chaddha would be liable for the consequences of Riccio's possible negligence, cannot be deemed to have preserved this issue for review, because the request, if given, would not have cured the defect now claimed in the charge, and was otherwise flawed. Accordingly, we reject Wasfi's claim that the jury was sufficiently misled by the charge to find in favor of Riccio on the ground that Chaddha's negligence was an intervening cause.
Wasfi also claims that the third charge was defective because its references to reasonable foreseeability as a limitation upon liability for a negligent act were
erroneous. At trial she excepted "again to the language dealing with foreseeability," having raised a similar objection to the first charge.
The focus of Wasfi's criticism of the references to foreseeability is not that such a concept is wholly irrelevant to the causal relationship between a negligent act and the harm flowing therefrom for which a defendant may be held responsible, but that the wording of the charge implied that the "precise damages" or "particular injury" suffered by Wasfi had to be reasonably foreseeable. Reviewing the third charge as a whole, as we must; Oberempt v. Egri, 176 Conn. 652, 656, 410 A.2d 482 (1976); we are not persuaded that it conveyed to the jury the impression that either defendant should be excused from liability for his negligence simply if he could not reasonably have foreseen the precise nature or extent of the harmful consequences that actually were suffered by Wasfi. In this charge the jury was told that "a defendant is not liable if the plaintiff's harm was caused by an independent source which intervenes between that defendant's negligence and the plaintiff's resulting condition and produces a result which was not reasonably foreseeable by the defendant. The test then is whether the harm which occurred was the same ge
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