Felix Contracting Corp. served as a contractor on a street excavation/repaving project in New York City. Plaintiff Derdiarian, employed by another company at the site, was stationed near the roadway heating and applying a sealant in a kettle of boiling enamel as part of the work. The construction zone was adjacent to live traffic and, according to plaintiff's evidence, lacked adequate safeguards—such as substantial barriers, proper barricading, channeling devices, and flagmen—to protect workers from intruding vehicles, despite contractual and common-law obligations to maintain a safe work area. During the operation, a motorist driving along the street suffered an epileptic seizure, lost control of his car, left the travel lane, and crashed into the worksite. The vehicle struck the plaintiff and the kettle, causing boiling enamel to splash onto him and inflict severe burn injuries. Plaintiff sued Felix Contracting for negligent failure to provide a safe worksite and also proceeded against the driver and the driver's physician (based on allegations related to the driver's medical condition and driving). A jury found for plaintiff and apportioned fault among the defendants. On appeal, Felix argued that the driver's conduct constituted a superseding cause as a matter of law, relieving Felix of liability. The case reached the New York Court of Appeals on whether the contractor could be held liable given the intervening conduct of the motorist (and any negligence by his physician).
Does a motorist's loss of control due to an epileptic seizure (and any related negligence by the motorist or his physician) constitute a superseding cause as a matter of law that breaks the causal chain, or may a contractor still be held liable where its failure to adequately secure a roadside worksite foreseeably exposed workers to the risk of intruding vehicles?
In New York, a defendant's negligence is a proximate cause of an injury if it was a substantial factor in bringing about the harm. An intervening act will break the causal nexus—and become a superseding cause—only when it is extraordinary under the circumstances, not foreseeable in the normal course of events, or independent of or far removed from the defendant's conduct. Whether an intervening act is a normal or foreseeable consequence of the situation created by the defendant's negligence is generally a question for the trier of fact. A defendant is liable for harms that fall within the scope of the reasonably foreseeable risks created by its conduct; the precise manner in which the harm occurs or the exact extent of injury need not be foreseeable.
The intervening conduct of the motorist (and any related medical negligence) did not, as a matter of law, constitute a superseding cause. It was for the jury to determine whether Felix Contracting's failure to secure the worksite was a substantial factor in causing the injury and whether the vehicle intrusion was a foreseeable risk of that negligence. The Court of Appeals upheld the jury's ability to find proximate cause against the contractor and rejected the argument that the driver's medical episode automatically severed liability.
The Court of Appeals emphasized that proximate cause revolves around whether the defendant's negligence was a substantial factor in producing the injury and whether the harm fell within the scope of the risk created by that negligence. Here, the contractor was responsible for maintaining a safe roadside work environment, and the record contained evidence that the worksite lacked adequate barriers, channeling, and flagging to protect workers from live traffic. The risk that a vehicle might leave its lane—through negligence, inattention, or even a medical event—and intrude into the work zone is exactly the type of hazard that proper precautions are meant to mitigate. Thus, the occurrence of a car entering the site and striking a worker was not so extraordinary or unforeseeable as to break the causal chain as a matter of law. The court clarified that an intervening act severs liability only when it is unforeseeable in the normal course or wholly independent of the risk created. The motorist's seizure-induced loss of control did not qualify as such an extraordinary event in the context of inadequate traffic protection at a street construction site. Moreover, a defendant need not foresee the precise manner of injury (being splashed by boiling enamel from a struck kettle) or its extent; it suffices that the general type of harm—worker injury from vehicular intrusion—was within the risk. Because reasonable minds could differ on whether Felix's negligence was a substantial factor and whether the intervening act was foreseeable, the issues were properly for the jury. Conclusively declaring a superseding cause would improperly remove classic proximate cause questions from the factfinder.
Derdiarian is a leading authority on intervening and superseding causation. It teaches that proximate cause typically remains a jury issue and that defendants cannot escape liability simply because a third party's negligent or medically induced act stands between their negligence and the plaintiff's harm. For students, the case operationalizes two core ideas: (1) the substantial factor test in New York and (2) the scope-of-risk approach to foreseeability. It also offers a practical template for analyzing multi-actor accident chains and for arguing when causation should—versus should not—be decided as a matter of law.
Derdiarian v. Felix Contracting Corp. solidifies a key negligence principle: a defendant remains liable when its breach creates a foreseeable risk and is a substantial factor in the resulting harm, even if a third party's intervening conduct is also negligent—or arises from a medical event. The court's analysis underscores that the law is less concerned with the exact sequence of events than with whether the injury stems from the very hazard that made the conduct negligent.