This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

“By failing to make this payment, the MHA shall have the right to collect the amount due by action of law. Your prompt attention to this matter is greatly appreciated.”

After three weeks with no response, Newman sent to Charlotte a letter that stated:

“Before instituting legal action, this is MHA’s final demand for your $750 assessment charge. It is unfortunate that deadbeats like you ruin our community.”

A copy of this letter was mailed to the twenty-eight other residents of Mar Vista. Newman also sent a copy of the letter to the editor of The Plains Press, the county newspaper, that had a circulation of 20,000 subscribers. In its next edition, the Press published Newman’s letter on its editorial page.

You are a private attorney in the area. Charlotte visits you in your office and asks you to write an Opinion Letter that describes any potential legal redress that might be available to her, and which also addresses any defenses that Newman and the MHA may have. Please do so.

The article appeared in the Orlando Evening Star under the title ‘On the Town’ by Jean Yothers and headed ‘Florida Bar Got the Bill’. The full text is as follows:

Jack Ruby’s flamboyant attorney Melvin Belli of San Francisco makes an indelible impression whither he goeth.

Consider the time he and Mrs. Belli were in Miami six or so years ago and Belli was a member of a panel at a program-meeting of the Florida Bar.

Here’s what happened:

In making arrangements for Belli’s participation it had been pointed out to him that since there were no funds provided in the budget for payment per se for his contribution as a lawyer to the program, the Florida Bar instead would pick up the hotel tab for himself and his wife during their stay. Belli agreed.

Oops.

A local attorney remembers, with embarrassed chagrin, how the plan backfired on the Florida Bar.

The evidence of the plaintiffs tended to show that for some hours on two or three different days during each week of its operation by the High Penn Oil Company, the oil refinery emitted nauseating gases and odors in great quantities; that the nauseating gases and odors invaded the nine acres owned by the plaintiffs and the other lands located within ‘a mile and three-quarters or two miles’ of the oil refinery in such amounts and in such densities as to render persons of ordinary sensitiveness uncomfortable and sick; that the operation of the oil refinery thus substantially impaired the use and enjoyment of the nine acres by the plaintiffs and their renters; and that the defendants failed to put an end to the atmospheric pollution arising out of the operation of the oil refinery after notice and demand from the plaintiffs to abate it. * * *.

Thomas v. Winchester became quickly a landmark of the law. In the application of its principle there may at times have been uncertainty or even error. There has never in this state been doubt or disavowal of the principle itself. The chief cases are well known, yet to recall some of them will be helpful. Loop v. Litchfield (42 N.Y. 351) is the earliest. It was the case of a defect in a small balance wheel used on a circular saw. The manufacturer pointed out the defect of the buyer, who wished a cheap article and was ready to assume the risk. The risk can hardly have been an imminent one, for the wheel lasted five years before it broke. In the meanwhile the buyer had made a lease of the machinery. It was held that the manufacturer was not answerable to the lessee. Loop v. Litchfield was followed in Losee v. Clute (51 N.Y. 494), the case of the explosion of a steam boiler. That decision has been criticised [Cc] ; but it must be confined to its special facts. It was put upon the ground that the risk of injury was too remote. The buyer in that case had not only accepted the boiler, but had tested it. The manufacturer knew that his own test was not the final one. The finality of the test has a bearing on the measure of diligence owing to persons other than the purchaser [Cc]

(1) Cause in Fact
Cause in fact represents the quite sensible requirement that the plaintiff must prove that the defendant’s acts or omissions contributed in some substantial degree to the plaintiff’s harm. By “substantial” degree we mean that the plaintiff has to prove that the defendant was solely responsible for the harm. Rather, the defendant’s acts need only have been a “substantial factor” in the plaintiff’s injury.

As you can see, the “substantial factor” test allows for the possibility that there might be other factors contributing to the harm. Indeed, there might be multiple defendants in a tort suit, if the acts of more than one individual was a “substantial factor” in causing the plaintiff’s harm.

Where these “other” factors, by nature or by human action, are reasonably foreseeable, such foreseeable causal contributions to the plaintiff’s harm are called “intervening causes.”. Such foreseeable “intervening causes” do not break the causal relation to the defendant’s acts. Where, on the other hand, such contributing factors are not reasonably foreseeable, they may be “superseding causes.” A “superseding” cause is a cause that is so substantial as to itself become the “producing cause” of the harm. Where the defendant first commits a tortuous act, after which a “superseding cause” presents itself, the link of causation between the defendant and the plaintiff is broken.