Intervening Act of the 3rd Party

Question 1

The Oropesa [1943]

Answer 1

Facts
There were storms out at sea and a collision happened between two ships, the Oropesa and the Manchester Regiment. In the incident, the Manchester Regiment suffered bad damage. The captain of the ship ordered 50 of his crew over to the Oropesa by lifeboat. One hour later, he boarded a lifeboat with 15 crewmembers, in order to seek advice, assistance and to enable help messages to be sent for the Manchester Regiment. However, the heavy seas caused the lifeboat they were on to capsize and as a result, nine of the crewmembers drowned. The relatives of the seamen brought an action for their deaths.

Issues
The issues surrounded who was responsible for the death of the seamen, whether it was the Oropesa captain or the Manchester Regiment captain. Advice was sought on whether the captain’s actions of leaving the sinking vessel broke the chain of causation.

Decision/Outcome
It was held that the deaths of the seaman were directly caused by the negligence of the Oropesa. There was no novus actus interveniens. The captain’s decision to leave the boat naturally resulted from the emergency of the severe damage caused by the Oropesa. Thus, there was no break in the chain of causation by the captain. Lord Wright stated that in order to break the chain of causation, the action had to be ‘unwarrantable, a new cause which disturbs the sequence of events, something which can be described as either unreasonable or extraneous or extrinsic’ [25].

Question 2

Knightley v Johns [1982]

Answer 2

Facts
Mr Johns was driving negligently and this resulted in a crash where his car overturned near the exit of a tunnel. Due to the crash, two police officers attended the scene. One of the police officer forgot to safely seal off the tunnel to prevent traffic and in response, he ordered the other officer to ride his motorcycle down the one-way tunnel to do so. The officer was against the natural flow of traffic and subsequently; he was involved in a collision.

Issues
The case surrounded who was liable for the officer’s injury and whether the instruction of the police officer would be classed as a novus actus interveniens that broke the chain of causation.

Decision / Outcome
The court held that the defendant was negligent and his order was a novus actus interveniens that would negate the car driver’s liability for the police officer’s injuries. While it can be said that the police officers attending the tunnel for the crash was a foreseeable event, the negligent order to drive down a one-way tunnel into opposing traffic was not foreseeable. This third party order broke the chain of causation. This case states that the test for causation is whether the damage is reasonably foreseeable and a ‘natural and probable’ cause of the defendant’s action. In this scenario, the negligent order given by the other police officer could not be reasonably foreseen and therefore, it was a new intervening act that broke the chain of causation.