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Eagle-Picher Industries Inc. v. Balbos8/29/1990
w. It is true that the facts of a case may place it in the middle ground where the issue of the existence of superseding negligence is properly left for the trier of fact; but, some cases are such that they gravitate so close to one or the other of the two poles that resolution of the issue becomes law.
Id. at 131 (citations omitted).
The evidence in this case gravitates so closely to one pole that as a matter of law, we conclude Bethlehem Steel's failure to warn its employees of the dangers posed by mishandling asbestos-containing products was not a superseding negligent cause.
The Court of Appeals, in addressing whether the actions of a mother were a superseding negligent cause of her child's injury from consuming lead paint chips, adopted the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 447, which governs intervening
negligent conduct by a third party generally, and noted the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 452, which addresses intervening conduct wherein the third party fails to act to prevent harm. Caroline, 269 Md. at 132-33, 304 A.2d 831(quoting Farley v. Yerman, 231 Md. 444, 448-50, 190 A.2d 773(1963)).
This court applied Maryland's doctrine of superseding cause in Banks v. Iron Hustler Corp., 59 Md. App. 408, 475 A.2d 1243(1984) (worker injured by conveyor belt brought product liability action against manufacturer of belt). We stated:
The connection between a defendant's negligence and the plaintiff's injury may be broken by . . . a superseding . . . cause . . . if it so entirely supersedes the operation of the defendant's negligence that it alone, without his negligence contributing thereto in the slightest degree, produces the injury . . . . But the connection is not actually broken, if the intervening event is one which might, in the natural and ordinary course of things, be anticipated as not entirely improbable, and the defendant's negligence is an essential link in the chain of causation. Of course, the definition of a superseding cause implies that the defendant's negligence cannot be the cause of the injury.
If the negligent acts of two or more persons, all being culpable and responsible in law for their acts, do not concur in point of time, and the negligence of one only exposes the injured person to risk of injury in case the other should also be negligent, the liability of the person
first in fault will depend upon the question whether the negligent act of the other was one which a man of ordinary experience and sagacity, acquainted with all the circumstances, could reasonably anticipate or not. If such a person could have anticipated that the intervening act of negligence might, in a natural and ordinary sequence, follow the original act of negligence, the person first in fault is not released from liability by reason of the intervening negligence of another.
Id. at 429-30, 475 A.2d 1243(quoting State v. Hecht Co., 165 Md. 415, 421-22, 169 A. 311 (1933)).
In the instant case, the negligent acts were actually failures to act or, more specifically, failures to warn. The facts of this case fail all the requirements set forth in Banks for finding a superseding cause. Bethlehem Steel's failure to warn did not supersede the appellants' failure to warn and was foreseeable. The appellants' failure to warn was an essential link in the chain of causation and a cause of the decedents' injuries. (See Section 6, supra.) Bethlehem Steel's failure to warn its employees would not have prevented the employees from being alerted to the dangers
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