Haft v. Lone Palm Hotel: PROXIMATE CAUSE. (旅馆泳池没警示父子双亡谁之过？Negligence Per Se? Res Ipsa Laquitur)

PROXIMATE CAUSE.

Haft v. Lone Palm Hotel,-Cal. 3d-, 478 P.2d 465, 91 Cal. Rptr. 465 (1970).

In an action to recover from a motel owner for the unwitnessed drownings of a father and son in the motel pool, plaintiffs alleged that defendant's failure to comply with the statutory requirement that a lifeguard be present or that a sign warning of the absence of a lifeguard be posted constituted negligence per se and was the proximate cause of the drownings as a matter of law. 

Accordingly, plaintiffs contended that these issues should not have been submitted for determination by the jury.

On appeal, the Supreme Court of California held that failure to satisfy the statutory safety requirements constituted negligence as a matter of law, and that, in proving defendant's violation, plaintiffs sustained their initial burden of proof on the issue of proximate cause. The burden of showing that their violation was not a proximate cause of the deaths was thereby shifted to the defendant.

In ruling that the failure to satisfy statutory safety requirements constituted negligence as a matter of law, the supreme court adopted a position recognized by earlier California decisions, and the majority of states which have passed on the question. However, the court's declaration that the evidence establishing the violation of such a statute would satisfy plaintiff's initial burden of proving proximate cause and shift the burden to the defendant is a new departure. 

The California Court of Appeals was faced with a similar fact situation in Lucas v. Hespera Golf & Country Club wherein plaintiff's son had drowned in an unattended swimming pool. There, the jury had returned a judgment for plaintiff. On appeal, defendant contested, the finding of proximate cause absent direct evidence that violation of 'the statute was the cause of death. In rejecting this contention, the court ruled that the "breach of a statutory duty may be sufficient to give rise to an inference from which the jury may find that the injury was the proximate result of the violation". 

The problem presented in Haft differs from that in Lucas, however, in that the jury returned a verdict for defendant in the former, while a plaintiff verdict was rendered in the latter. The jury in Haft appeared to have rejected the inference that defendant's failure to supply a lifeguard was the proximate cause of the drownings, despite the absence of defense evidence to the contrary. The court was therefore faced with a situation in which defendants were allowed "to gain the advantage of the lack of proof inherent in the lifeguardless situation which they have created." 

In view of defendant's lack of rebuttal evidence on the issue of proximate cause, the court announced that plaintiffs' initial showing of the statutory violation was sufficient to shift to defendants the burden of proving otherwise. In justifying this ruling, the Haft court found two earlier California decisions dealing with analogous situations to be persuasive.'

In Summers v. Tice, two hunters simultaneously fired their guns and one pellet of shot struck a third member of the party. Instead of dismissing the action against both for lack of conclusive proof against either, the court shifted the burden of proving lack of causation to the two defendants." Thus, the innocent plaintiff was allowed to recover where the negligence of the defendants was clear and only the issue of causation was in doubt.

The holding in Summers was predicated in part upon the celebrated decision in Ybarra v. Spangard. While that case dealt primarily with a res ipsa laquitur situation, the practical difficulties were similar. There the plaintiff sustained an injury while anesthetized on an operating table. The burden of demonstrating which among the many doctors and nurses who had participated in the operation had caused the injury proved to be impossible. In view of the unfairness of this burden, the court came to the plaintiff's aid and held that under the res ipsa loquitur doctrine, plaintiff could maintain his claim against everyone who had any connection with the operation, and the burden was on the individuals to show their non-involvement.

While the issue of proximate cause was not at the heart of these two decisions, the analogy is unavoidable. Where negligence was clear and only the issue of individual causation was in doubt, the courts shifted the burden of proof to the defendants, requiring them to show an absence of responsibility.

It must be remembered, however, that these two cases are precedent only on the issue of apportionment of liability, not on the issue of proximate cause. In Haft, the jury's return of a defense verdict forced the court to re-evaluate the weight to be given proof of a violation of a safety statute. As noted, the prevailing position, as per Lucas, was that the jury was permitted to draw an inference of proximate cause from proof of a statutory violation. But the defense verdict in Haft, an apparent rejection of such an inference, was returned in the absence of any defense proof to support it. Rather than allow the verdict to stand the Haft court, upon the rationale of Ybarra and Summers, declared that the burden of proof must be shifted to the defendant. This decision was reached on the ground that since the defendant was negligent as a matter of law in failing to provide a lifeguard, and since the absence of a lifeguard had operated to deny plaintiffs their only possible witness to the drownings, the defendant must bear the burden of proof which his neglect had made so difficult. As a practical matter, it would appear to be equally as difficult to prove absence of proximate cause as to prove its existence. The impact of this decision upon California case law is that it replaces what was merely an allowable inference under Lucas with a compelled finding of proximate cause in the absence of defense evidence to the contrary.

As the Haft court noted, this result is consistent with the emerging tort law policy of assigning liability to the party who is in the best position to distribute the loss.