The Missouri Supreme Court, in a 5-2 split decision, has endorsed the doctrine of Superseding Intervening Cause in reversing a $1,300,000 verdict in favor of a 4-year-old that exited a school bus and was hit and run over by an oncoming car that passed by the school bus in the opposite lane. The court held as a matter of law that a violation of a traffic law by the oncoming car that hit the child amounted to a superseding intervening cause that was unforeseeable and the actions of the bus driver were not the proximate cause of the accident as a matter of law.
The school bus company had a contractual duty to drop the plaintiff off at a certain corner so he would not have to cross the street to get home. However, a substitute bus driver dropped the plaintiff off on the opposite corner, which required the plaintiff to cross a busy intersection to get home. The driver had not been given the information on the correct drop-off location. Upon bringing the bus to the stop, the driver checked her mirrors for traffic, extended the stop arm, and activated the flashing lights. A driver that had been stopped behind the bus, pulled out and passed the bus, and hit the plaintiff in the street. The jury returned a verdict for $1.3 million.
On appeal the bus company argued it was not negligent because it dropped plaintiff off in a reasonably safe location and the criminal acts of the hit-and-run driver were an intervening and superseding cause that became the new proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries. In holding for the bus company the Court held: “To determine the legal issue of proximate cause, a court must determine whether the plaintiff presented evidence that their injuries were “a reasonable and probable consequence of the act or omission of the defendant… Proximate cause looks at “the scope of foreseeable risk created by the defendant’s act or omission… This analysis “relies upon hindsight to determine whether the precise manner of a particular injury was a natural and probable consequence of a negligent act… When the acts of two or more persons combine to injure a person, “there is a question as to whether the initial act of negligence was the proximate cause of the injury or whether there was an efficient, intervening cause… An intervening cause must be a new and independent force which so interrupts the chain of events that it becomes the responsible, direct, proximate, and immediate cause of the injury…“If a prior and remote cause does nothing more than give rise to an occasion by which an injury is made possible, and there intervenes between that cause and the injury a distinct and unrelated cause of injury, a negligence action does not lie, even though the ‘but for’ test is satisfied… When the intervening cause becomes the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injury, the defendant is relieved from liability as a matter of law.”
The Court framed the issue as whether the bus company’s failure to provide its bus driver with the route information was the proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries – or whether the criminal acts of the hit-and-run driver were the proximate cause of the injuries. Finding a violation of § 304.050.1, which governs traffic rules pertaining to buses that are stopped, the Court held the driver who hit plaintiff violated the law. The Court then held “The criminal act of a third party is “rarely foreseeable” and “The hit-and-run driver’s criminal actions in this case broke the causal chain.” Further, the Court found, “The sudden, unexpected decision of the hit-and-run driver to violate state law by maneuvering past a stopped school bus with its arm out and lights flashing to strike a child crossing the street is the type of “surprising, unexpected, or freakish,” third party action exceeding “the natural and probable consequences of [the] defendant’s actions.” In essence the Court held a criminal act by a third party excusing the bus company’s negligence in not following the proper drop off point since the bus company’s actions were not the foreseeably proximate cause of the child’s injuries as a matter of law. This case is significant since it reinforces the concept of intervening cause as a matter of law which will potentially give rise to the ability of defendants to raise this issue at the summary judgment level during the pretrial discovery stage. D.J. v. First Student, Inc., No. SC 100702, 2025 WL 662596 (Mo. Feb. 28, 2025)