A speeding driver collides with another vehicle at an intersection, causing the other vehicle to strike a utility pole. The collision with the pole results in a power outage for nearby homes. In one household affected by the outage, a patient relying on an oxygen machine dies several hours later due to the lack of electricity. If the family of the deceased sues the driver for wrongful death, what is the best legal argument as to whether the driver is liable for the patient's death?
The driver can be held liable because their speeding was the factual cause of the chain of events leading to the patient's death.
The collision with the utility pole was a superseding cause that broke the chain of liability.
The death was not a foreseeable consequence of the driver's conduct, and liability is limited by the doctrine of proximate cause.
The driver had no duty to ensure the safety of utility-dependent patients in nearby homes.
The correct answer identifies that the patient's death is too attenuated or 'remote' from the driver's conduct to establish proximate cause. While the driver's conduct can be said to have factually contributed to the chain of events leading to the patient's death (but-for causation), proximate cause doctrine limits liability to outcomes that are sufficiently direct and foreseeable. The oxygen-dependent patient's death resulting from the downed utility pole would not generally be considered foreseeable to a reasonable person in the driver's position. Answers focusing on duty or intervening causes are close, but they do not fully address the primary issue of removing liability through proximate cause analysis.
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