# Orcutt v. Spokane County

> Washington Supreme Court · September 28, 1961 · 58 Wash. 2d 846

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9539674

## Case

- **Full name:** Etha Orcutt, as Administratrix, Appellant, v. Spokane County, Respondent
- **Court:** Washington Supreme Court
- **Decided:** September 28, 1961
- **Citations:** 58 Wash. 2d 846; 364 P.2d 1102; 1961 Wash. LEXIS 375
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Mallery
- **Judges:** Hunter, Finley
- **Cited by:** 62 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9539674

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding that a jury question existed as to whether the decedent was acting under an irresistible impulse even though evidence existed of prior suicide attempts
- holding that plaintiff could use medical witness testimony to establish decedent’s “uncontrollable impulse” to commit suicide in a wrongful death claim
- applying irresistible impulse rule to negligent acts resulting in suicide

## Opinion text

*860 Mallery, J.
(dissenting) — From January to October, 1957, the decedent was frustrated by others in repeated attempts at suicide. She then achieved what to her seemed a desirable result by the deliberate use of understood means. The cause of death is not challenged. Instead, the majority opinion holds that a cause of the cause is the proximate cause, i.e., that the cause of her mental state is the proximate cause of her death. I agree that a cause continues to-be a proximate cause of all of the effects which are directly and exclusively produced by it. Notwithstanding this, a cause ceases to be a proximate cause when an independent and efficient cause intervenes between it and the effect in question.
Our concern in this case is with the nature of intervening independent causes. I can agree that they are not the mere changes of aspect which mechanical forces produce in the course of natural processes. The interposition of an independent, voluntary and understanding human agency, without which the process set in motion by the initial cause would have ended prior to or without the effect in question, breaks the chain of causation and makes the initial cause remote. This is, of course, not the case where the initial cause deprives the mind of volition and understanding of natural processes. A human act then is no more than a mechanical continuation of the process set in motion by the initial cause. Thus, the cause of a mental state of delirium is the proximate cause of what the delirious person unwittingly does. The cause which produced an uncontrollable frenzy is for the same reason the cause of the effects thereof.
This is the rule of Arsnow v. Red Top Cab Co., 159 Wash. 137 , 292 Pac. 436 , which is precisely in point and which the majority opinion overrules sub silentio. The decedent was not delirious. She knew precisely what she was doing and what the effect of her act would be, neither did she act in an uncontrollable frenzy. Under these circumstances, her knowing and intentional act was not the mechanical continuation of such a natural process as to be logically attributable to the defendants.
*861 The majority opinion, in basing its result on uncontrol-lability, seems to hold either that the decedent did not want to commit suicide and, without knowingly intending to achieve that result, surrendered to an uncontrollable impulse to take the thirty-six sleeping pills, which theory is factually untenable, or that in following a course, which we think was unwise, acted pursuant to an uncontrollable election of conduct. Insanity does not make every unwise human act uncontrollable. On the contrary a desired end is achieved by an act that is specifically controlled for that purpose. Otherwise, every unwise act is uncontrollable within the purview of the majority opinion.
I dissent.
Hill, Donworth, and Ott, JJ., concur with Mallery, J.
December 11, 1961. Petition for rehearing denied.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9539674. Public record. Not legal advice.