Articles Posted in Civil Matter

The story behind Davis v. Foremost Dairies is a tale of a woman who could be considered at least slightly accident prone. Three different doctors weighed in on the probable cause of her main injury, a bulge in the disc between two of the vertebrae in her neck. In addition to the car accident with one of the defendants, she suffered a fall down some stairs and an incident in which an eight-year-old child grabbed her neck. The issue at hand was whether or not the accident with the defendant was the proximate cause of her permanent pain.

Proximate cause is a legal concept that most students of law find confusing at first. Proving that a defendant was the proximate cause of a plaintiff’s injury is crucial to proving the overall claim. Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co. is probably the most famous case laying out the legal definition of proximate cause. Chief Judge Benjamin Cardozo, later Justice Cardozo, wrote this often cited opinion. His decision, strongly dissented to by Judge William Andrews, deviates somewhat from what could be called the common sense definition of causation.

For those not familiar with the Palsgraf case, here is a brief explanation. This case dealt with a woman injured by a falling scale on a train platform that was knocked over by vibrations in that platform cause by fireworks. These fireworks exploded when two guards pushed and pulled a man carrying a non-descript package onto a departing train. The issue at hand was whether or not the men, who were in the employ of the train company at the time of the incident, were liable for Ms. Palsgraf’s injuries. A traditional “but-for” analysis of this event would say that Ms. Palsgraf would not have been injured but for the acts of the railroad company’s employees. The New York Court of Appeals reversed the New York Supreme Court and denied relief to the plaintiff. The court determined that the behavior of the train company employees was too remote from the resulting harm. The men were not considered the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injuries. How do courts determine the issue of causation in a modern context? The answer is very commonly expert medical testimony. Ms. Davis’ case used the opinions of several of these medical experts.

According to the Louisiana Code of Criminal Procedure, a merchant may use reasonable force to detain a suspected shoplifter for questioning or arrest for up to an hour. La. Code Crim. P. Art. 215(A)(1). A merchant who acts under this provision is entitled to immunity from any civil actions arising out of the detention, provided he can show that he had reasonable cause to believe that the detained person committed theft; he did not use unreasonable force; the detention occurred on the store premises; and the detention did not last longer than 60 minutes. Freeman v. Kar Way, Inc.

The issue of the merchant’s reasonableness was at the center of the recent case of Rhymes v. Winn-Dixie Louisiana, Inc. On the morning of December 24, 2007, Thomas Rhymes visited the Winn-Dixie grocery store in Abbeville to purchase some cough syrup. While shopping, Rhymes’s blood sugar began to drop and he felt dizzy and weak. He slipped the cough syrup into his jacket pocket, grabbed several bags of honey buns, and made his way toward the checkout. A store manager intercepted Rhymes and demanded the products from his jacket pockets. The manager then told Rhymes to leave the premises but a moment later told him to stay, though Rhymes ignored this request and continued toward the door. The manager grabbed Rhymes by the neck and twisted his left arm behind his back. The manager attempted to hit Rhymes as they made their way to the back office but was stopped, mid-swing, by another store employee. When the police arrived, a different manager advised the officer to release Rhymes as the store did not wish to press charges. Rhymes filed suit for physical and mental injuries resulting from the incident. Winn-Dixie answered, denying that Rhymes was injured and asserting the merchant’s detention privilege under the Louisiana Code. Winn-Dixie also filed a motion for summary judgment, which the trial court granted on May 20, 2010. Rhymes appealed.

The Third Circuit began its review with the well-established principle that summary judgment is appropriate only when there is “no genuine issue of material fact, and that the mover is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Rhymes’s argument on appeal was that a question of material fact “regarding whether the force used by the manager was reasonable” existed. Indeed, Rhymes argued that the store manager’s actions were “beyond unreasonable.” The court likened the analysis under the merchant statute to determining whether the force used by police officers in arresting criminal offenders is reasonable, for which the Louisiana Supreme Court has held: