## Facts

- Gloria Yun was driving a 1987 Ford van on the Garden State Parkway with her father, Chang Hak Yun, as a passenger.
- The spare tire and mounting hardware attached to the rear of the van came loose and fell onto the roadway.
- Yun pulled the van onto the shoulder.
- Chang got out and crossed lanes of highway traffic to retrieve the tire and/or related parts.
- While attempting to return across the highway, Chang was struck by another vehicle.
- Chang later died from the injuries sustained in the collision.
- Plaintiffs sued multiple defendants connected to the van and spare-tire apparatus, including the van manufacturer, the selling dealer, the converter/installer, the spare-tire assembly manufacturer, and a repair facility, alleging negligent manufacture, distribution, service, and/or breach of warranty tied to a defective spare-tire mounting system.
- The trial court granted summary judgment to the product- and service-related defendants on the ground that plaintiffs could not establish proximate cause.
- Plaintiffs appealed from the order granting summary judgment.

## Issues

1. Whether Chang Hak Yun’s decision to cross a high-speed highway to retrieve the fallen spare tire was a superseding, intervening cause that cut off liability for any earlier product defect or negligence as a matter of law.
2. Whether proximate cause was so one-sided on this record that the trial court properly resolved it on summary judgment rather than sending it to a jury.

## Decision

- The Appellate Division affirmed summary judgment for the defendants.
- The court held that, even assuming a defect or negligence caused the tire to detach, Chang’s act of crossing the Garden State Parkway to retrieve the tire was “highly extraordinary” and constituted a superseding cause as a matter of law.
- Because the superseding act broke the causal chain, plaintiffs failed to show that any defect in the spare-tire assembly was a proximate cause of Chang’s injuries and death.

## Legal Principles

- Proximate cause requires a causal sequence in which the defendant’s conduct is a substantial link to the injury and the sequence is not broken by an intervening cause.
- An intervening act becomes a superseding cause when it is so unexpected, abnormal, or “highly extraordinary” in relation to the risk created by the defendant’s conduct that fairness and public policy bar liability.
- A defendant’s conduct that merely creates the condition or occasion for an independent, later act may be a factual “but for” cause without being a legal (proximate) cause when the later act is treated as superseding.
- Although proximate cause is often for the jury, a court may decide it on summary judgment when, viewing the record most favorably to the nonmoving party, no reasonable factfinder could conclude the defendant’s conduct proximately caused the injury.

## Conclusion

In this 1994 Appellate Division decision, the court concluded that the alleged failure of the spare-tire mounting system only set the stage for Chang Hak Yun’s later decision to cross the highway, and that his conduct was so extraordinary that it superseded any earlier defect or negligence; therefore, the summary judgment dismissals were affirmed.


Yun v. Ford Motor Co., 647 A.2d 841, 276 N.J.Super. 142 (1994)