## Facts

- A Norwalk Yellow Cab driver parked a taxi in a high-crime area, left it unattended with the keys in the ignition and doors unlocked, and went inside a house.
- Two teenagers approached intending to steal items, saw the keys, and stole the taxi to drive it; they had been drinking alcohol and using marijuana.
- While driving toward Stamford, the driver of the stolen taxi fell asleep in traffic, rear-ended another car, and then tried to flee by driving onto a sidewalk.
- The stolen taxi struck Brenda Snell, a pedestrian, causing serious injuries and substantial medical expenses.
- Snell sued the driver and cab company for negligence, alleging that leaving the taxi accessible created a foreseeable risk of theft and negligent operation injuring third parties.
- Defendants argued the teenagers’ criminally reckless conduct was a superseding cause that relieved them of liability.

## Issues

1. Whether the trial court erred by instructing the jury on superseding cause where the intervening conduct was criminally reckless or intentional.
2. Whether the jury instructions and special interrogatories, read as a whole, misled the jury on proximate cause, scope of risk, and superseding cause.
3. Whether the jury’s interrogatory answers (negligence, foreseeability, and substantial-factor causation, but harm “not within the scope of the risk”) were legally inconsistent requiring a new trial.

## Decision

- The Appellate Court affirmed judgment for the defendants.
- It held a superseding-cause instruction was permissible because the intervening act was characterized as criminally reckless or intentional, not merely negligent.
- It concluded the jury instructions and interrogatories, considered as a whole, adequately and correctly stated the governing standards.
- It held the interrogatory answers could be reconciled: the jury could find negligence and causal contribution yet still find the harm outside the scope of the risk, supporting a defense verdict.

## Legal Principles

- Proximate cause requires that the defendant’s negligence be a substantial factor in producing the injury and that the harm be of the same general nature as the foreseeable risk created by the negligence.
- Foreseeability and “scope of risk” operate as limiting concepts on liability, even where causation in fact and substantial-factor causation are found.
- An intervening act may be a superseding cause that breaks liability if it is sufficiently independent and not reasonably foreseeable; the doctrine may be presented to the jury where the intervening conduct is criminal, intentional, or reckless.
- Jury instructions are reviewed in their entirety; reversal requires a showing that the charge and interrogatories likely misled the jury.

## Conclusion

The Appellate Court upheld a defense verdict in a negligence action arising from a stolen taxi, ruling that a superseding-cause instruction was allowed given intervening criminally reckless conduct and that the jury’s findings were not legally inconsistent because the jury could limit liability by concluding the injury fell outside the scope of the risk created by the defendant’s negligence.


Snell v. Norwalk Yellow Cab, Inc., 172 Conn. App. 38 (2017)