Jordan operates a construction site and negligently secures scaffolding. A plank falls and injures Sam, who needs immediate medical care. Jordan places Sam in his car to drive him to the hospital. En route, an abrupt and violent lightning storm appears; a bolt strikes the roadway directly in front of the car, causing Jordan to swerve and collide with another vehicle. Sam suffers additional injuries in the collision.
Sam brings a negligence action against Jordan seeking compensation for both the injuries caused by the falling plank and the additional injuries sustained in the car accident. Jordan admits negligence with respect to the scaffolding but asserts that the lightning strike was a superseding cause that breaks the chain of proximate causation as to the car-accident injuries.
Which of the following facts, if proven, would provide Jordan with the strongest support for his superseding-cause defense?
Sam was not wearing a seat belt at the time of the collision.
The lightning strike was an abrupt, highly unusual natural occurrence that could not reasonably have been anticipated.
Emergency medical personnel later moved Sam negligently, aggravating his injuries.
The road on which Jordan was driving had a posted speed limit of 35 miles per hour.
An unforeseeable, extraordinary act of nature is ordinarily treated as a superseding cause because it is independent of the defendant's negligence and outside the scope of the risks that made the defendant's conduct negligent. Showing that the lightning strike was an abrupt, highly unusual natural occurrence that could not reasonably have been anticipated best supports Jordan's argument. The posted speed limit is irrelevant to foreseeability, the plaintiff's failure to wear a seat belt concerns contributory fault rather than superseding cause, and negligent medical treatment is a foreseeable intervening force that does not cut off liability.
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Multistate Bar Examination
Torts
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