## Facts

- In 2005, Alex Novak, then 81, was a passenger in a van when a 1993-manufactured tire allegedly failed, causing a crash into a power pole.
- Novak suffered serious injuries that left him disabled and reliant on a three-wheel motorized scooter for mobility.
- Novak had sued the tire manufacturer and a mechanic for products liability/negligence based on an alleged failure to warn that tires degrade with age and should be replaced despite adequate tread; the case was not retried before his death.
- In 2011, Novak, then 87, was using his motorized scooter in a marked crosswalk when a driver turning right failed to yield and struck him.
- Novak sustained spinal fractures and hemorrhaging and died eight days later.
- Novak’s daughter brought a wrongful-death action against the tire manufacturer and the mechanic, alleging the 2005 failure to warn caused the 2005 crash, which caused disability, which led to scooter use and reduced maneuverability, which contributed to the 2011 collision and death.
- The trial court granted defendants summary judgment, finding the evidence insufficient to establish a legally cognizable causal link between the 2005 conduct and the 2011 death.

## Issues

1. Whether defendants’ alleged 2005 failure to warn about tire aging could be a proximate (legal) cause of Novak’s death after a separate traffic accident six years later.
2. Whether the 2011 driver’s failure to yield was a superseding cause that cut off defendants’ liability as a matter of law.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal affirmed summary judgment for the tire manufacturer and the mechanic.
- The court held the 2011 crosswalk collision and resulting death were outside the scope of risk created by an alleged failure to warn about aging tires.
- The court held the 2011 driver’s negligence was a superseding cause severing legal causation.
- Because proximate cause failed as a matter of law, no triable issue required a jury trial.

## Legal Principles

- Proximate cause in California is a policy-based limitation on liability, restricting recovery to harms within the scope of the risk that made the defendant’s conduct wrongful.
- A lengthy “chain of events” may establish factual sequencing but still fail as a matter of law if the later harm is too remote or attenuated from the defendant’s conduct.
- An intervening act may be a superseding cause when it is not a foreseeable consequence of the original risk and breaks the chain of legal causation.
- Courts may resolve proximate cause and superseding cause on summary judgment when, even on plaintiff’s version of events, the later injury falls outside the relevant scope of risk.

## Conclusion

The court rejected an effort to extend failure-to-warn liability from a 2005 tire-blowout injury to a 2011 crosswalk death, holding the later collision was not within the risk created by the alleged warning defect and was instead legally attributable to a superseding, intervening driver’s negligence.


Novak v. Continental Tire N. Am., 22 Cal. App. 5th 189 (Cal. Ct. App. 2018)