Multistate Bar Examination Practice Question

Liability turns on proximate cause. The driver's negligence was a factual ("but-for") cause of the injury because, without the collision, the sidewalk would have been lit and the pedestrian would not have fallen. The remaining question is whether the injury is within the foreseeable scope of the risk created. A power outage predictably leaves surrounding walkways unlit, increasing the danger that people will stumble or otherwise be hurt while navigating in the dark. Because that kind of harm is a normal, foreseeable consequence and no independent, superseding force intervened, most courts would treat the driver's negligence as a legal cause of the pedestrian's injury. The outage itself is not a superseding cause; it is the very condition the driver created. Thus the driver can be held liable. The other responses either (1) mischaracterize the outage as superseding, (2) incorrectly shift responsibility to the municipality, or (3) add an irrelevant sidewalk-defect requirement.