stating that "a defendant who creates a dangerous 'condition' is not responsible for a plaintiff's injury that results from the intervention of another agency, if at the time of the defendant's original negligence the intervening agency could not reasonably be foreseen"
How later courts described this case
- stating that "a defendant who creates a dangerous 'condition' is not responsible for a plaintiff's injury that results from the intervention of another agency, if at the time of the defendant's original negligence the intervening agency could not reasonably be foreseen"
- holding that "suicide and/or deliberate and intentional self-destruction is unforeseeable as a matter of law"
- addressing when a decedent’s suicide is an “intervening efficient cause” that breaks the chain of causation flowing from a defendant’s negligence
- “A ‘genuine issue of material fact’ is a disputed factual issue that is ‘outcome determinative.’ ‘A fact is outcome determinative if the resolution of that fact [before the trial court] will establish or eliminate a claim or defense....’” (quoting John J. Coleman III, Summary Judgment in Alabama: The Nuances of Practice Under. Rule 56, 20 Cumb. L.Rev. 1,5(1989))
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
I find no initial legal liability on the part of any defendant, and I would affirm the summary judgment on that ground, although I do agree that Michael Gilmore's act was unforeseeable as a matter of law.