Question

You grew up and learned to drive in England (where they drive on the “wrong” side of the road). Now in the US for 3 months, you leave a house party totally drunk. Your car is parked outside the house, but another guest at the party – a female acquaintance whom you do not know very well, -- suggests that you take a taxi home rather than drive. You protest, but the acquaintance calls an Uber for you on her phone. She then says goodbye to you in the hallway, and returns to the party.

Once outside, you stumble towards the street. The Uber is there. You waive him away. Then you get into your car and drive on the wrong side of the road.

A driver in a Fiat 500 (tinier car than yours) coming towards you, swerves violently towards the sidewalk to get out of your way. The Fiat hits a bicyclist, killing the woman cyclist, whose body is thrown off the bike high into the air and directly into a frail 94-year old man walking with his equally frail twin broth, and his relatively healthy 92-year old wife. As a result of the impact, the elderly man falls over, breaks this hip, and cracks 5 ribs. The twin brother severely breaks his femur. The wife, caught in the jostle, also falls back and suffers a blow to the head on the pavement, but breaks no bones.

Passersby call 911, and the husband and his twin, both on the ground and unable to move even a little without a great deal of pain, are taken to the hospital by ambulance.

The wife gets up by herself with barely any assistance, and insists to passersby that she is fine and doesn’t need to go to the E.R. with her husband. She sincerely believes that she is fine, and explains that she must get home to walk and feed the couple’s dogs. When the passersby insist that she also go to the hospital to get checked out, she refuses, explaining that the dogs haven’t been walked or fed all day and that they desperately need to be.

At the hospital, the doctors determine that the elderly husband and his twin will both require an extended stay to fix their broken bones and to be kept under observation. After two weeks, the elderly husband contracts pneumonia, which is exceedingly common for elderly patients who stay over 7 days in the hospital. As a result of the pneumonia, the elderly husband becomes progressively weaker and eventually dies.

The twin undergoes surgery to fix his femur. During the surgery, the doctors determine that he needs a blood transfusion and accidentally give him the a transfusion with the blood type. The twin dies as a result of this error.

As for the wife, a few hours after she returned home and walked the dogs, she began to have a bad headache. She took some aspirin and went to sleep. However, the headache was worse when she awoke the next morning. Shortly thereafter, she died. It turned out that the blow to her head had, unbeknownst to her, caused internal bleeding in her brain. It is common for the person to have a delayed headache in such situations but not know that they are bleeding until it is too late. And so it was for this wife. Had she gone to the hospital immediately, that would likely have saved her life.

11. Regarding the death of the elderly husband, you are:
    1. Not responsible for his death because you were drunk and learned to drive in England, and so didn’t realize that you were driving on the wrong side of the road.
    2. Not responsible for his death because you didn’t knock him over yourself, at least not directly.
    3. Not responsible for his death because he died of general weakness and pneumonia, which were beyond your control.
    4. Responsible for his death because you are the proximate cause of his death.
    5. Responsible for his death because it was foreseeable -- from the moment that you got into your car outside the house -- that the elderly man would die of general weakness and pneumonia in the hospital.
    6. Responsible for his death because you committed a felony by driving drunk.
    7. Not responsible because the fault was actually that of the Fiat 500 driver.

12. Regarding the death of the elderly wife, you are:
    1. Not responsible for her death because you were drunk and learned to drive in England, and so didn’t realize that you were driving on the wrong side of the road.
    2. Not responsible for her death because you didn’t knock her over yourself, at least not directly.
    3. Not responsible for her death because she died of bleeding in the brain, which was beyond your control.
    4. Responsible for her death because you were the proximate cause of her death.
    5. Responsible for her death because it was foreseeable -- from the moment that you got into your car outside the house -- that the elderly wife would die of bleeding in the brain.
    6. Responsible for her death because you committed a felony by driving drunk.
    7. Not responsible because the fault was actually that of the Fiat 500 driver.

13. Again, regarding the death of the elderly wife, her decision not to go to the hospital, but to go home after knocking her head:
    1. was an intervening factor that broke the chain of causation because it was utterly unforeseeable that she should do so.
    2. was an intervening factor that did not break the chain of causation because, as a free person, it was her decision to make, and hers alone.
    3. was an intervening factor that did break the chain of causation because, as a free person, it was her decision to make to go home, and no one had the authority to order her to do otherwise.
    4. was not an intervening factor because it was common for a person in her condition not to know that they were bleeding in the brain and hence reasonably foreseeable that she would choose to go home.
    5. was not an intervening factor because it was foreseeable that she would choose to walk her dogs rather than go to the ER with her husband.

14. Regarding the death of the twin brother, you are:
    1. Liable because you set in motion a chain of events, each step of which was reasonably foreseeable from the vantage point of the previous step.
    2. Liable because your car didn’t break his femur.
    3. Not liable because it was the fault of the female cyclist.
    4. Not liable because medical malpractice constituted an intervening factor that broke the chain of causation.
    5. Not liable because it his walking on the sidewalk when he was so frail and fragile was an intervening factor the broke the chain of causation.
    6. In this case, you could argue that the fume-related injuries were not foreseeable. However, you may be responsible for the other driver’s injuries, since running a red light could foreseeably cause a car accident.

Answer 1

1. Regarding the death of the elderly husband, you are:

Option d). Responsible for his death because you are the proximate cause of his death.

This is so because your actions will be regarded as the proximate cause of the elderly person's death since his death occurred as a 'natural & probable consequence' of your act, and there is no intervening factor to break the chain of causation.

2. Regarding the death of the elderly wife, you are:

Option d). Responsible for his death because you are the proximate cause of her death.

3. Again, regarding the death of the elderly wife, her decision not to go to the hospital, but to go home after knocking her head:

Option a). was an intervening factor that broke the chain of causation because it was utterly unforeseeable that she should do so.

Her decision to not go to the hospital to get checked out is an unforeseeable intervening factor that breaks the chain of causation.

4. Regarding the death of the twin brother, you are:

Option d). Not liable because medical malpractice constituted an intervening factor that broke the chain of causation.