N.J. Model Civil Jury Charge 6.14

6.14 PROXIMATE CAUSE — WHERE THERE IS CLAIM OF

INTERVENING OR SUPERSEDING CAUSE FOR JURY’S

CONSIDERATION (Approved 08/1999; Revised 09/2021)

NOTE TO JUDGE

This charge should be given in conjunction with Model Civil Charge

6.12 or 6.13 where there is also a jury question as to whether an

intervening or superseding cause brought about the injury or harm.

In this case, [name of defendant or other party] claims that the

accident/incident/event or plaintiff’s injury/loss/harm was caused by an independent

intervening cause and, therefore, that [name of defendant or other party] was not a

contributing factor to the accident/incident/event or injury/loss/harm.

An intervening cause is the act of an independent agency that destroys the

causal connection between the defendant’s [or other party’s] negligence and the

accident/incident/event or injury/loss/harm. To be an intervening cause , the

independent act must be the immediate and sole cause of the accident/incident/event

or injury/loss/harm. The intervening cause must be one that so completely

supersedes the operation of [name of defendant or other party]’s negligence that

you find that the intervening event caused the accident/incident/event or

injury/loss/harm, without [name of defendant or other party]’s negligence

contributing to it in any material way.1 In that case liability will not be established

because [name of defendant or other party]’s negligence is not a proximate cause

of the accident/incident/event or injury/loss/harm.

However, [name of defendant or other party] would not be relieved from

liability for negligence by the intervention of acts of third persons, if those acts were

reasonably foreseeable. By that I mean, that the causal connection between [name

of defendant or other party]’s negligence and the accident/incident/event or

injury/loss/harm is not broken if the intervening cause is one that might, in the

natural and ordinary course of things, be anticipated as not entirely improbable. 2

Where the intervention of third parties is reasonably foreseeable, then there still may

be a causal connection between the defendant’s [or other party’s] negligence and

the accident/incident/event or injury/loss/harm. The fact that there were intervening

causes that were foreseeable or that were normal incidents of the risk created does

not relieve the defendant of liability.

3

1 Davis v. Brooks, 280 N.J. Super. 406, 412 (App. Div. 1993).

2 Id. See also S.H. v. K & H Transp., Inc., 465 N.J. Super. 201 (App. Div. 2020) (reversing a trial

court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of a bus company on the basis that it was not

foreseeable that its negligence in failing to drop a mentally disabled teenage girl at her mother’s

home as instructed would result in the girl being sexually assaulted).

3 Rappaport v. Nichols, 31 N.J. 188, 203 (1959); Cruz-Mendez v. ISU, 156 N.J. 556 (1999).

You must determine whether the alleged intervening cause was an

intervening cause that destroyed the substantial causal connection between the

defendant’s negligent actions (or omissions) and the accident/incident/event or

injury/loss/harm. If it did, then [name of defendant or other party]’s negligence was

not a proximate cause of the accident/incident/event or injury/loss/harm.