## Facts

- Kevin John Rideout, driving with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.16, attempted a left turn and collided with an oncoming vehicle driven by Jason Reichelt.
- Reichelt’s vehicle spun and stopped in the roadway; its headlights no longer worked, leaving the car unlit.
- Reichelt and his passenger, Jonathan Keiser, exited the vehicle and walked to Rideout’s SUV to check for injuries.
- They then returned toward Reichelt’s disabled car because Reichelt was concerned it could be struck and wanted to activate the flashers.
- While Reichelt and Keiser stood by the unlit car in the roadway, an approaching vehicle driven by Tonya Welch struck and killed Keiser.
- Rideout was convicted of operating while intoxicated/visibly impaired causing death under Mich. Comp. Laws § 257.625(4) and sentenced to 3 to 15 years.

## Issues

1. Whether the trial court erred by misstating causation law, including conflating factual causation with proximate causation and incorrectly defining superseding intervening cause.
2. Whether the evidence was sufficient to prove that Rideout’s intoxicated driving was the proximate cause of Keiser’s death, given intervening conduct by Keiser and the later driver.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded.
- The trial court’s causation instructions were erroneous because they collapsed factual and proximate cause and suggested a superseding cause must be the sole cause of death.
- Although Rideout’s conduct was a factual (“but for”) cause of the sequence of events, the evidence was insufficient to establish proximate cause.
- Keiser’s voluntary return to the roadway after reaching a position of apparent safety, combined with Welch’s later driving, constituted a superseding intervening cause that broke the causal chain for the charged result offense.

## Legal Principles

- Criminal causation for result crimes has two distinct components: factual cause and proximate cause; factual causation alone cannot support liability.
- Proximate cause requires that the death be a direct and natural result of the defendant’s conduct, within the scope of the risk created, and not attributable to a superseding intervening cause.
- A superseding intervening cause can arise from independent human actions that are not a direct and natural consequence of the defendant’s conduct, including a victim’s informed, voluntary re-exposure to danger after reaching apparent safety.
- A superseding cause need not be the sole cause of the result to break proximate causation.

## Conclusion

Because the jury was not properly instructed on proximate cause and superseding intervening causes, and because the record showed only factual causation—while the victim’s voluntary return to a position of danger after apparent safety broke proximate causation—the conviction for OWI/OWVI causing death was reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings.


People v. Rideout, 272 Mich. App. 602, 727 N.W.2d 630 (Mich. Ct. App. 2006)