## Facts

- Virginia Laureano was a residential tenant in premises owned by Gilbert Louzoun and others.
- Laureano alleged the landlords failed to provide heat and hot water and failed to maintain the building boiler in proper working condition.
- Laureano alleged the landlords had actual notice and constructive notice (at least two weeks) of the defective boiler condition.
- Around 5:00 a.m. on January 21, 1985, Laureano put two large pots of water on her stove to boil as a substitute for heat/hot water.
- While pouring boiling water from one pot into another, Laureano banged the pots together, spilling boiling water on her knee and feet and causing burns.
- Laureano sued for negligence, alleging the landlords’ failure to supply heat/hot water caused her injuries.

## Issues

1. Whether the landlords’ alleged failure to provide heat and hot water and to maintain the boiler was the proximate cause of Laureano’s burn injuries.
2. Whether Laureano’s act of banging the pots, causing the spill, constituted an intervening act that severed causation as a matter of law, supporting summary judgment.

## Decision

- The Appellate Division, Second Department affirmed the order granting defendants summary judgment and dismissing the complaint, with costs.
- The court held the alleged failure to provide heat and hot water was not the proximate cause, as a matter of law, of Laureano’s injuries.
- The court concluded the immediate cause of injury was Laureano’s intervening act of banging one pot against the other, which brought about the spill and burns.
- The court reasoned the burns were not injuries normally expected to ensue from a failure to supply heat/hot water.

## Legal Principles

- Proximate cause limits liability even where a defendant’s conduct furnishes the occasion for a plaintiff’s later actions; a defendant is not liable for harm produced by a separate intervening act that actually causes the injury.
- An intervening act may break the causal chain as a matter of law when it produces the injury in a manner not normally expected from the defendant’s alleged negligence.
- Foreseeability functions as a constraint on proximate cause: harms that are not the ordinary, expected result of the alleged breach may be deemed too remote for liability on summary judgment.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed dismissal because the landlords’ alleged failure to supply heat and hot water merely prompted the tenant’s self-help measure, while the tenant’s independent mishandling of boiling pots was the intervening cause of the burns, making proximate cause lacking as a matter of law.


Laureano v. Louzoun, 165 A.D.2d 866, 560 N.Y.S.2d 337 (N.Y. App. Div. 2d Dep’t 1990)