Essay Flashcards

A café owner hires a courier to move a heavy promotional display using a wheeled dolly through the dining area. The dolly has defective wheels and the café floor is slick from an overlooked spill of coffee that has not been cleaned. While the courier pushes the dolly toward a glass-front display near the entrance, the dolly collides with the display, causing the glass to shatter and injure a patron standing nearby. The immediate cause of the patron’s injury is the glass shattering from the collision; the proximate cause is the café owner’s long-standing neglect to repair or remove the known hazardous condition (the defective wheels and the uncleaned spill) which foreseeably created the hazardous environment.
(a) Identify the controlling doctrine of proximate cause as distinguished from immediate cause.
(b) In these facts, distinguish which is the proximate cause and which is the immediate cause, and explain why.
(c) If the injured patron sues the café owner and the courier for damages, discuss the liability of the café owner for the courier’s acts within the scope of employment and how proximate cause affects liability.