Law Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for legal professionals, students, and others with experience or interest in law. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
The other day I saw a random clip on YouTube, where Alice sneaks up to Bob, who is vacuuming, and scares Bob. Bob gets startled and swings the vacuum into (Bob's own) expensive television, breaking the TV in the process.
It got me thinking if Alice could be liable for damages here and what the respective law would be.
Supplemental: Would anything change, if the TV was actually owned by Alice?
I will assume that whatever Alice did to startle Bob was a breach of a duty that she owed to Bob, in order to get to what I see as the more interesting aspect of the question: whether Bob's intervening act removes Alice's liability for the breaking of the television. There are certainly scenarios where Alice might have startled Bob without even breaching a duty, but in that case the analysis would end there.
In negligence, Alice is held liable for harm that is reasonably foreseeable as a result of Alice's breach of a duty. One of the elements of a successful negligence claim is causation: Alice is not liable for harm that is too remote from her breach.
On its own, proof by an injured plaintiff that a defendant was negligent does not make that defendant liable for the loss. The plaintiff must also establish that the defendant’s negligence (breach of the standard of care) caused the injury. That link is causation.1
Bob's startle response would almost certainly be considered a foreseeable reaction, and thus, not sufficient to separate Alice from the breaking of the television.
An instinctive human reaction, or any non-negligent human action in the chain of causation will almost never break the chain of causation, because such reactions will be held foreseeable; and even if they are not, the precise chain of events leading to an accident need not be foreseeable.
(Ken Cooper‑Stephenson, Personal Injury Damages in Canada (Carswell, 1996))
See also The Restatement of Torts (Second), § 447, which says that an intervening act does not remove the defendant's liability if: "(a) the actor at the time of his negligent conduct should have realized that a third person might so act, or (b) a reasonable man knowing the situation existing when the act of the third person was done would not regard it as highly extraordinary that the third person had so acted, or (c) the intervening act is a normal consequence of a situation created by the actor's conduct and the manner in which it is done is not extraordinarily negligent."
"[I]t is the general nature of the intervening acts and the accompanying risk of harm that needs to be reasonably foreseeable. Legal causation does not require that the accused must objectively foresee the precise future consequences of their conduct." (R. v. Maybin, 2012 SCC 24).
Foreseeability does not require that the intervening action be probable; it only requires that it would not be brushed aside as "far-fetched."
The degree of probability that would satisfy the reasonable foreseeability requirement was described in The Wagon Mound (No. 2) as a "real risk", i.e. "one which would occur to the mind of a reasonable man in the position of the defendan[t] ... and which he would not brush aside as far-fetched"
(Mustapha v. Culligan of Canada Ltd., 2008 SCC 27, paragraph 13).
Examples of intervening acts held to be reasonably foreseeable:
Greendrake's answer says that "whereas Bob's shock is foreseeable, I pretty much doubt that him breaking the TV is." In my view, this takes too colloquial a view of foreseeability. As Hart and Honoré say in Causation in the Law, 2nd Ed. (1985):
... in one sense everything is foreseeable, in another nothing. The consequences of negligence are almost invariably surprises. All depends on the detail with which the harm is described. ... there will always be some details of the recoverable harm which are not foreseeable.
... the fact that harm described by reference to certain details is not foreseeable does not render the harm, more broadly described, unforeseeable. ... If we have learned from experience to expect a 'rainstorm' on seeing dark clouds, then the rainstorm was foreseeable even if, when it occurs, it has other characteristics (e.g. lasted two hours, covered an area of 40 sq. miles) which we could not foresee but which might appear, ex post facto, in a more specific description of it.
Of course, foreseeability is a question of fact, and I acknowledge that a finder of fact might very well conclude that swinging a vacuum is not within a class of actions that might be anticipated by a reasonable person. While I disagree with Greendrake's analysis and conclusion, the contrast with my answer helps highlight precisely where the issue would be if this were to be litigated.
1. Note the terminology. The breach of the standard of care is the negligence. But liability only follows when the negligence causes harm. This is contrary to the framing in Dale M's answer, which says, "Alice was negligent if her actions caused damage to Bob’s TV," and that "[i]f we are talking about Alice’s TV then there is no negligence because Bob has suffered no damage." That language conflates negligence (the breach) with liability (breach plus causation).
I actually remember seeing a similar court case on TV. I'm pretty sure it was Judge Judy, as she went off on the friend, berating about being childish, irresponsible, and was lucky his friend didn't have worse injuries. I don't remember the case exactly, but it goes something like this:
A mechanic was working in his home's garage. The mechanic was working on fixing something and very focused. His friend had arrived unannounced and saw this and decided to jump scare him. His friend snuck up behind the mechanic and and yelled. The friend confirmed this is what happened in his testimony. The scare caused the mechanic to flinch and cut his hand deeply on a sharp piece of metal he was working on. This wound required him to be taken to the emergency room, get stitches, and lose time working at his full time job, due to the injury. The mechanic sued his friend for damages.
The judge said the visitor is liable, as his intent was to provoke the reaction which caused the injury. Had it been purely accidental, there would have been no intent and therefore, no liability.
The relevant law is negligence.
Most jurisdictions say that there are four elements to a negligence action:
duty: the defendant has a duty to others, including the plaintiff, to exercise reasonable care,
breach: the defendant breaches that duty through an act or culpable omission,
damages: as a result of that act or omission, the plaintiff suffers an injury, and
causation: the injury to the plaintiff is a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the defendant's act or omission.
Arguably, Alice was negligent if her actions caused damage to Bob’s TV.
If we are talking about Alice’s TV then there is no negligence because Bob has suffered no damage.
Bob gets startled and swings the vacuum into (Bob's own) expensive television, breaking the TV in the process.
Swinging things around is quite an atypical reaction for a startled person. You would expect them to scream, shake, drop what they're doing and run away, but not to start swinging erratically whatever they happen to be holding in their hands.
Thus, whereas Bob's shock is foreseeable, I pretty much doubt that him breaking the TV is. Unless, of course, Alice was aware of Bob's propensity to swing things erratically when frightened.
