## Facts

- Packard Flying Service, Inc. operated an aircraft repair service at a municipal airport in Imperial, Nebraska.
- The aircraft was owned by the Chase County Flying Club, of which plaintiff’s husband was a member.
- A club member arranged for Packard to repair the aircraft’s damaged rudder.
- Packard’s employees removed the rudder for repair and left the aircraft in the hangar with the ignition key in place and without any warning that the rudder had been removed.
- Plaintiff’s husband failed to notice the rudder was missing, took plaintiff as a guest passenger, and the aircraft crashed, injuring plaintiff.
- The rudder was an essential control surface; the aircraft was not airworthy without it.
- The disconnected control cables and missing rudder were open to inspection and plainly visible.
- Federal aviation regulations prohibited operating an unairworthy aircraft and placed primary responsibility for airworthiness and preflight inspection on the pilot.

## Issues

1. Whether Packard was negligent in removing the rudder, leaving the key in the aircraft, and failing to warn that the rudder had been removed.
2. Whether any negligence by Packard was a proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries, or whether the pilot’s conduct was an intervening, superseding cause breaking the causal chain.

## Decision

- The Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed the judgment on a jury verdict for Packard.
- The court held the evidence supported finding that any negligence by Packard was not the proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries.
- The pilot’s failure to conduct an adequate preflight inspection and decision to fly an obviously unairworthy aircraft constituted an intervening, superseding cause that Packard was not required to anticipate.

## Legal Principles

- Negligence is judged by foresight, not hindsight; conduct is not negligent if a reasonably prudent person would not foresee it as creating danger to others.
- Proximate cause is defeated where a third person’s later negligence, while in full control of the situation, is not reasonably anticipatable and directly results in the injury.
- An injury is not actionable if it was not reasonably foreseeable as a probable result of the defendant’s conduct, or if it resulted from a new, independent cause not reasonably anticipated.
- Where a defendant’s conduct merely creates a condition and an unforeseeable independent act produces the harm, the independent act may be treated as the superseding cause.

## Conclusion

The court upheld a defense verdict because the pilot’s regulatory duty and obvious opportunity to discover the missing rudder made his decision to fly an unairworthy aircraft an unforeseeable, superseding cause, defeating proximate cause as to the repair shop’s omissions.


Lock v. Packard Flying Serv., Inc., 185 Neb. 71, 173 N.W.2d 516 (Neb. 1970)