Jane Doe v. Defendant

Supreme Court of Connecticut
Volume and Reporter Unknown, Page 750 (1984)

ELI5:

Rule of Law:

A landowner's negligent failure to maintain property, such as allowing vegetation to become overgrown, is not the proximate cause of injuries resulting from a third party's intentional criminal act on the property. The criminal act is considered a superseding cause that is not within the foreseeable scope of risk created by the passive condition of the land.

Facts:

Jane Doe, a meter reader, was working in New London on July 30, 1984.
A man forced Doe at gunpoint from a public sidewalk onto the defendant's adjacent commercial property.
The area on the defendant's property where Doe was taken was shielded from public view by overgrown sumac bushes and tall grass.
Behind this vegetation, the man viciously assaulted and raped Doe for thirty minutes.
The neighborhood was widely known as a high-crime area, frequented by derelicts, with prevalent prostitution and drug activity.
The defendant's mother had been robbed on the property 14 months prior to the assault on Doe.
City officials had twice notified the defendant landowner of housing code violations for the 'obnoxious' overgrowth and debris, ordering him to clear it.
The defendant failed to correct these violations prior to the assault on Doe.

Procedural Posture:

Jane Doe sued the defendant landowner in a Connecticut trial court, alleging common law negligence, statutory negligence, and public nuisance.
The case was tried before a jury.
The jury returned a general verdict in favor of Jane Doe, awarding her $540,000 in damages.
The defendant filed a motion to set aside the jury's verdict.
The trial court judge granted the defendant's motion and set aside the verdict.
Jane Doe (as appellant) appealed the trial court's judgment to the Appellate Court.
The Connecticut Supreme Court transferred the appeal to itself before the Appellate Court could hear it.

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Issue:

Does a landowner's negligent failure to remove overgrown vegetation, which provides concealment for a violent crime, constitute the proximate cause of injuries sustained by a pedestrian during a sexual assault committed on the property by a third party?

Opinions:

Majority - Glass, J.

No. A landowner's negligence in maintaining property that provides concealment for a crime is not the proximate cause of injuries from that crime because the intentional criminal act of a third party is a superseding cause that breaks the chain of causation. The legal test for proximate cause is whether the defendant's conduct was a 'substantial factor' in producing the injury, which requires that the harm which occurred was of the same general nature as the foreseeable risk created by the defendant's negligence. The foreseeable risk created by overgrown vegetation is physical injury from contact with it, such as tripping, not that it will serve as an inducement or opportunity for a violent sexual assault. A prudent person would not infer from ordinary experience that overgrown vegetation would catalyze a violent crime. The criminal act was not a dependent intervening force but rather an independent act that was not within the 'scope of the risk' created by the defendant's failure to maintain the property. Therefore, as a matter of law, the condition of the land was not the proximate cause of the plaintiff's injuries.

Analysis:

This decision significantly narrows landowner liability for third-party criminal acts by applying a strict interpretation of proximate cause and the 'scope of the risk' doctrine. It establishes that passive property conditions which merely provide an opportunity or concealment for a crime are insufficient to establish legal causation. The ruling protects landowners from liability for unpredictable, violent acts that are only incidentally related to the condition of their property. For future plaintiffs in similar situations, this case creates a high bar, requiring them to demonstrate that the specific crime committed was a directly foreseeable result of the landowner's specific negligence, rather than just a possibility in a high-crime area.

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