The Court of Appeals, in a full-fledged opinion by Judge Stein, reversing the appellate division, determined the proximate cause of the accident presented a jury question. Defendants own a farm from which a calf, born that day, escaped. Plaintiff’s decedent saw the calf in the roadway, stopped her car and got out to help the calf. She was then struck by a vehicle and killed. The appellate division held that the escaped calf created a condition for the accident, but was not a proximate cause of the accident. The Court of Appeals reviewed the case law addressing when an intervening act severs the causal connection and held that, under these facts, proximate cause presented a jury question:
The very same risk that rendered negligent the Farm’s alleged failure to restrain or retrieve its farm animal — namely, that the wandering calf would enter a roadway and cause a collision — was, in fact, the risk that came to fruition … . That the Farm could not predict the exact manner in which the calf would cause injury to a motorist does not preclude liability because the general risk and character of injuries was foreseeable … . … Thus, we cannot say, as a matter of law, that the Farm’s negligence merely furnished the occasion for the collision or that the accident resulting in decedent’s death did not flow from the Farm’s negligent conduct in permitting its calf to stray.
A factfinder could reasonably conclude that decedent’s actions in exiting her vehicle and entering the roadway were an entirely “‘normal or foreseeable consequence of the situation created by the defendant’s negligence'” … . In Hastings v Sauve, we held that a property owner may be liable under ordinary principles of tort law when he or she, through negligent acts or omissions, allows a farm animal — specifically, a domestic animal as defined in Agriculture and Markets Law § 108 (7) — to stray from the property on which the animal is kept (see 21 NY3d at 125-126). … Thus, a jury could reasonably conclude that it is foreseeable that a motorist who encounters such an animal on a rural roadway would attempt to remove the animal from the thoroughfare. Such conduct cannot, as a matter of law, be considered so “extraordinary under the circumstances, not foreseeable in the normal course of events, or independent of or far removed from the defendant’s conduct,” that it breaks the chain of causation … . Hain v Jamison, 2016 NY Slip Op 08583, CtApp 12-22-16
NEGLIGENCE (QUESTION OF FACT WHETHER ALLOWING A CALF TO ESCAPE FROM A FARM WAS A PROXIMATE CAUSE OF THE DEATH OF A MOTORIST WHO STOPPED TO HELP THE CALF AND WAS STRUCK)/ANIMAL LAW (QUESTION OF FACT WHETHER ALLOWING A CALF TO ESCAPE FROM A FARM WAS A PROXIMATE CAUSE OF THE DEATH OF A MOTORIST WHO STOPPED TO HELP THE CALF AND WAS STRUCK)/PROXIMATE CAUSE (QUESTION OF FACT WHETHER ALLOWING A CALF TO ESCAPE FROM A FARM WAS A PROXIMATE CAUSE OF THE DEATH OF A MOTORIST WHO STOPPED TO HELP THE CALF AND WAS STRUCK)/INTERVENING CAUSE (QUESTION OF FACT WHETHER ALLOWING A CALF TO ESCAPE FROM A FARM WAS A PROXIMATE CAUSE OF THE DEATH OF A MOTORIST WHO STOPPED TO HELP THE CALF AND WAS STRUCK)/CONDITION VERSUS PROXIMATE CAUSE (QUESTION OF FACT WHETHER ALLOWING A CALF TO ESCAPE FROM A FARM WAS A PROXIMATE CAUSE OF THE DEATH OF A MOTORIST WHO STOPPED TO HELP THE CALF AND WAS STRUCK)/FORESEEABILITY (QUESTION OF FACT WHETHER ALLOWING A CALF TO ESCAPE FROM A FARM WAS A PROXIMATE CAUSE OF THE DEATH OF A MOTORIST WHO STOPPED TO HELP THE CALF AND WAS STRUCK)