Kramer v. Szczepaniak

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Appellate Court Date: 2019.04.15
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Kramer v. Szczepaniak, 2018 IL App (1st) 171411Appellate Court SEAN KRAMER and NANCY CORONEL, Plenary Guardian of the
Caption Estate and Person of Jasmine Vega, a Disabled Person,
Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. JOHN SZCZEPANIAK, a/k/a John
Szcpenqniak; FARID KESSANTI; SALAH BACHIR; CAB
INVESTMENT GROUP, INC.; and UBER TECHNOLOGIES,
Defendants (Farid Kessanti; Salah Bachir; Cab Investment Group,
Inc.; and Uber Technologies, Defendants-Appellees).
District & No. First District, Third Division
Docket No. 1-17-1411
Filed December 19, 2018
Decision Under Appeal from the Circuit Court of Cook County, No. 14-L-10679; the
Review Hon. Kathy M. Flanagan, Judge, presiding.
Judgment Reversed and remanded.
Counsel on Kevin J. Golden, of Dudley & Lake, LLC, of Chicago, and Lynn D.
Appeal Dowd and Jennifer L. Barron, of Naperville, for appellants.
Kimberly A. Jansen, Peter A. Walsh, and Albert C. Angelo, of
Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP, of Chicago, for appellee Farid Kessanti.
Melissa A. Murphy-Petros and Loren S. Cohen, of Wilson Elser
Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP, of Chicago, for appellee Uber
Technologies.
No brief filed for other appellees.
Panel JUSTICE ELLIS delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.
Presiding Justice Fitzgerald Smith and Justice Howse concurred in the
judgment and opinion.
OPINION
¶1 After a late night at the movies, Jasmine Vega and Sean Kramer requested a ride home
using the popular ride-sharing app Uber. Defendant Farid Kessanti responded to the request,
and with that, Vega and Kramer began their journey home. According to the complaint,
Kessanti proved to be a less than able driver: He did not know how to get to Vega’s and
Kramer’s intended destination, took several wrong turns, and got lost. When Kramer pointed
this out to Kessanti and offered to help with directions, Kessanti became irate and kicked Vega
and Kramer out of his car—at around two in the morning.
¶2 Unable to find another ride and thus left to walk the rest of the way home, Vega and
Kramer departed and, in due course, arrived at the intersection of 43rd Street and Kedzie
Street. While crossing Kedzie in a crosswalk, Vega and Kramer were hit by a
driver—defendant John Szczepaniak—who was speeding and failing to keep a proper lookout,
resulting in significant injuries to Kramer and Vega.
¶3 Kramer and Nancy Coronel, in her capacity as Vega’s guardian, filed this negligence
action against Szczepaniak, Kessanti, Uber, Cab Investment Group, Inc., and Salah Bachir, the
person who lent Kessanti the car he was driving. In response, all defendants but Szczepaniak
moved to dismiss, claiming that plaintiffs failed to state a claim because they did not—and
could not—allege facts that, if proved, would establish that the car accident causing Vega’s
and Kramer’s injuries was reasonably foreseeable. The circuit court agreed and dismissed
those portions of the complaint with prejudice.
¶4 We reverse. Proximate cause is typically a question of fact. It is here, as well, at least at this
preliminary stage. Taking the allegations as true and drawing all reasonable inferences in
plaintiffs’ favor, reasonable minds could differ as to whether the car accident was a foreseeable
result of Kessanti ejecting Vega and Kramer from his vehicle in the middle of the night,
abandoning them in a dimly lit, high-traffic area where cars were driving recklessly and
patrons were leaving a number of bars and taverns. We cannot say, as a matter of law, that the
negligence of Kessanti (and thus Uber) bore no causal relationship to Kramer and Vega’s
injuries. The complaint should not have been dismissed.
¶5 BACKGROUND
¶6 The following facts are taken from plaintiffs’ seventh amended complaint, the operative
pleading in this case. On the night of October 4, 2014, Vega and Kramer went to a movie
theater located at 322 East Illinois Street in Chicago. After the movie was over, at
approximately 1:30 a.m. on the morning of October 5, 2014, Vega used the Uber application
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on her smartphone to request a ride for her and Kramer to their home at 4138 South Albany
Street in Chicago. At approximately 2 a.m., Kessanti accepted Vega’s ride request.
¶7 Suffice it to say, the ride did not go smoothly. Kessanti “did not drive the proper route to
4138 South Albany.” Instead, he made multiple wrong turns and got lost. When Kramer
pointed this out to Kessanti and attempted to give him directions, Kessanti became angry,
stopped the car, and kicked Vega and Kramer out, even though they had not yet arrived at their
destination. Vega and Kramer acceded to Kessanti’s demand and left his car in an area near
44th Street and Homan Avenue, an area the complaint alleges to be a “high-crime area.”
¶8 Vega and Kramer began walking home. Their path eventually led them to the intersection
of 43rd Street and Kedzie Street. While crossing Kedzie Street, Vega and Kramer were struck
by a vehicle traveling southbound on Kedzie driven by defendant John Szczepaniak.
Szczepaniak’s vehicle was speeding, and he failed to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk.
Szczepaniak did not stop after hitting Vega and Kramer. He was apprehended the following
day and is currently incarcerated. Kramer was injured, and Vega was severely injured by the
hit-and-run.
¶9 On October 15, 2014, plaintiffs sued Szczepaniak for negligence. On March 5, 2015, they
filed their first amended complaint, adding Uber as a defendant. Second and third amended
complaints followed. With respect to Uber and Kessanti, the circuit court dismissed plaintiffs’
first, second, and third amended complaints, reasoning that Kramer had not alleged facts that
could establish how Kessanti’s wrongful ejection was the proximate cause of Vega’s and
Kramer’s injuries. The dismissal of the third amended complaint was with prejudice. However,
after extensive procedural wrangling that we need not detail here, the circuit court
reconsidered its order of dismissal and permitted plaintiffs to further amend, ultimately
resulting in the filing of a seventh amended complaint against Uber and Kessanti (among
others).
¶ 10 In count V of his seventh amended complaint, Kramer alleged that Uber “knew or
reasonably should have known that it was not safe to wrongfully eject” Vega and Kramer in the
area of 44th Street and Homan Avenue because, among other things, (1) they were unfamiliar
with the area; (2) it was “dark, poorly illuminated and *** certain street lights were not
operating”; (3) there was no “visible police or other law enforcement presence”; (4) the area
“presented an increased risk of injury *** from other traffic, from other third parties, from the
roadway or sidewalks that may have been in a state of disrepair, and from not having
immediate, alternative transportation available to exit the locale”; (5) there was a “high
volume of traffic and limited traffic control devices”; (6) “third parties departing various
drinking establishments and in a [sic] various states of insobriety, aggression or other unsafe
state of mind were present”; (7) “motor vehicles were speeding and driving dangerously,”
creating “an increased risk of personal injury to pedestrians”; and (8) the area “presented an
increased risk of being a victim of a crime or other accident inflicted by a third party or another
motor vehicle.”
¶ 11 Kramer alleged that Uber breached its duty of care to Vega and Kramer by, among other
things, (1) kicking Vega and Kramer out of his car before reaching their destination after he
voluntarily agreed to transport them home; (2) allowing Kessanti to utilize the Uber app to
transport customers despite knowing that Kessanti was mentally and physically unfit and had
“a history of confrontation, wrongful discharges, and arguments with other [Uber] customers”;
(3) failing to “do the appropriate background check on Kessanti before allowing him to
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transport customers in the City of Chicago”; and (4) failing to train Kessanti to ensure that he
“would never drop a passenger off at a destination other than the destination directed by the
customer.” With respect to causation, Kramer and Coronel alleged, “[i]t was reasonably
foreseeable that one or more of the foregoing acts or omissions would cause, in whole or in
part,” the injuries to plaintiffs.
¶ 12 Counts VI and VII were largely duplicative of count V. Count VI, which incorporated
count V by reference, purported to state a claim for negligence based on an alleged violation of
section 9-112-020 of the Chicago Municipal Code (Chicago Municipal Code § 9-112-020
(amended May 28, 2014)). Section 9-112-020 regulates taxicab services and specifically
requires that taxicab drivers obtain a chauffeur’s license to operate a cab in the City of
Chicago. Kramer alleged that Kessanti never obtained a chauffeur’s license and that Uber’s act
of permitting Kessanti to drive for Uber despite not having a chauffeur’s license was a
proximate cause of their injuries.
¶ 13 In a similar vein, count VII alleged that (1) Uber voluntarily undertook to drive Vega and
Kramer home, (2) Uber breached that undertaking, and (3) Vega and Kramer’s injuries were
proximately caused by Uber’s breach of its voluntary undertaking. Likewise, counts II and III,
which were against Kessanti for negligence based upon a voluntary undertaking and
common-law negligence, were functionally indistinguishable from counts IV and VII. Count
IV, which was against Bachir, alleged that Bachir negligently entrusted his vehicle to Kessanti
when, among other things, he knew that Kessanti was unfit, in general and specifically for
Uber, and that Vega and Kramer were injured as a proximate result of Bachir’s negligence.
¶ 14 On April 17, 2017, Uber moved to dismiss counts V through VII of Kramer’s seventh
amended complaint. The same day, Bachir and Cab Investment Group, Inc. moved to dismiss
count IV. A week later, Kessanti followed suit and moved to dismiss counts II and III. Each
motion sought relief pursuant to section 2-615 of the Code of Civil Procedure. See 735 ILCS
5/2-615 (West 2016). In its motion, Uber urged that Vega’s and Kramer’s injuries were not
proximately caused by Kessanti’s alleged negligence—that Kessanti’s conduct, at most,
“furnished a condition making possible the injury caused by the independent illegal acts” of
the negligent driver, Szczepaniak.
¶ 15 In his motion, Kessanti raised the same argument. He reasoned that “the fact that the
Plaintiffs would be hit by a speeding driver while [plaintiffs] were crossing the street in a
crosswalk a number of blocks from where the alleged wrongful ejection occurred, was not
foreseeable to Mr. Kessanti,” and that the negligent driver’s conduct “was the superseding,
intervening, and sole proximate cause of the accident.” Bachir’s motion followed the same
trajectory, arguing that “the negligent driving of co-defendant John Szczepaniak striking the
plaintiffs with his vehicle while they were crossing Kedzie Avenue on foot was the intervening
act of a third person which broke the causal connection between the alleged negligent
entrustment of a vehicle to *** Kessanti and the injuries caused by Szczepaniak.”
¶ 16 On May 8, 2017, the circuit court granted each motion. It reasoned that it was not
foreseeable that dropping off plaintiffs “in a different location than the requested location
would result in them being hit by a negligent driver when they attempted to cross the street
blocks away from where they were dropped off without incident.” The trial court ruled that the
actions of Szczepaniak, in “driving his vehicle negligently so as to strike the Plaintiffs as they
were crossing the street in a crosswalk blocks away from where they exited the vehicle was an
intervening, superseding cause of the Plaintiffs’ injuries that broke any causal chain stemming
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from the acts of the Co-Defendants.” The court thus dismissed the complaint with prejudice as
to defendants Uber, Kessanti, Bachir, and Cab Investment Group. The court entered a finding
pursuant to Illinois Supreme Court Rule 304(a). See Ill. S. Ct. R. 304(a) (eff. Mar. 8, 2016).
This appeal followed.
¶ 17 ANALYSIS
¶ 18 On appeal, plaintiffs claim that the circuit court erred by dismissing counts II through VII
of their seventh amended complaint pursuant to section 2-615. We must first address the issue
of forfeiture. In their respective briefs, Uber and Kessanti maintain that plaintiffs forfeited the
proximate cause issue by failing to file a written response to defendants’ motions to dismiss the
seventh amended complaint.
¶ 19 The complaint in this case went through several iterations. Defendants filed multiple
motions to dismiss, and plaintiffs responded, raising arguments that were the same or similar to
the arguments raised in defendants’ motions to dismiss the seventh amended complaint.
Through those many iterations, the trial court consistently ruled that Kramer’s and Vega’s
injuries were not reasonably foreseeable and thus plaintiffs could not establish proximate
cause as a matter of law. The trial court had dismissed the sixth amended complaint on that
ground as well.
¶ 20 Thus, when the viability of the seventh amended complaint came before the trial court, the
court explicitly deemed additional briefing unnecessary, as the trial court was clearly well
versed with the case law, the allegations, and the parties’ respective positions by that point. It
would be grossly unfair to thus blame plaintiffs for “failing” to respond to the motion to
dismiss the seventh amended complaint or to suggest that they forfeited arguments that they
vigorously contested throughout this lengthy pleading process. We find no forfeiture and turn
to the merits.
¶ 21 I
¶ 22 A section 2-615 motion tests the legal sufficiency of a complaint. Schweihs v. Chase Home
Finance, LLC, 2016 IL 120041, ¶ 27. When ruling on a section 2-615 motion, we must take as
true all well-pleaded facts in the complaint. Id. “The critical inquiry is whether the allegations
of the complaint, when considered in a light favorable to the plaintiff, are sufficient to state a
cause of action upon which relief may be granted.” Id. Our review is de novo. Id.¶ 23 Kramer’s negligence claims against Uber and Kessanti were based on three theories of
liability: common-law negligence, statutory negligence, and voluntary undertaking. Though
each theory differs in some respects, they all share one feature in common: Each requires that
the plaintiff plead and prove that the defendant’s alleged negligence was the proximate cause
of the plaintiff’s injury. Thompson v. Gordon, 241 Ill. 2d 428, 438 (2011) (common-law
negligence); Munizza v. City of Chicago, 222 Ill. App. 3d 50, 56 (1991) (statutory negligence);
Bruntjen v. Bethalto Pizza, LLC, 2014 IL App (5th) 120245, ¶ 60 (voluntary undertaking).
¶ 24 Proximate cause is a two-part inquiry. First Springfield Bank & Trust v. Galman, 188 Ill.
2d 252, 257-58 (1999). First, the defendant’s act or omission must be the cause in fact of the
plaintiff’s injury. Id. Second, the defendant’s conduct must be the legal cause of the plaintiff’s
injury. Id.-5-
¶ 25 A
¶ 26 The trial court did not base its dismissal on the absence of cause in fact. Uber conceded in
its brief and at oral argument that plaintiffs had adequately pleaded cause in fact. But Kessanti
does not, and because we may affirm the dismissal on any basis in the record (CNA
International, Inc. v. Baer, 2012 IL App (1st) 112174, ¶ 31), we will consider the question of
cause in fact.
¶ 27 A defendant’s negligence is the cause in fact of a plaintiff’s injuries if there is a “reasonable
certainty” that a defendant’s acts caused the injury or damage. Lee v. Chicago Transit
Authority, 152 Ill. 2d 432, 455 (1992). When, as here, the plaintiff’s injury “results not from
the defendant’s negligence directly but from the subsequent, independent act of a third
person,” courts determine cause in fact by employing the “substantial factor” test. Galman,
188 Ill. 2d at 258-59.
¶ 28 There can be more than one cause of a plaintiff’s injury. Douglas v. Arlington Park
Racecourse, LLC, 2018 IL App (1st) 162962, ¶ 34. A cause-in-fact analysis does not require a
court to pick the last or most significant act of negligence; rather, “[a] defendant’s conduct is a
material element and a substantial factor in bringing about an injury if, absent that conduct, the
injury would not have occurred.” Galman, 188 Ill. 2d at 258; Abrams v. City of Chicago, 211
Ill. 2d 251, 258 (2004); Walker v. Chicago Housing Authority, 2015 IL App (1st) 133788, ¶ 49
(citing Galman, 188 Ill. 2d at 258).
¶ 29 The complaint more than adequately pleads cause in fact. The only reason Kramer and
Vega were crossing Kedzie Avenue at two in the morning is that they were forced to walk
home, after being kicked out of the Uber vehicle. “[A]bsent that conduct” in wrongfully
expelling Kramer and Vega from the Uber vehicle, “the injury would not have occurred.” See
Galman, 188 Ill. 2d at 258; Abrams, 211 Ill. 2d at 258.
¶ 30 Defendants invoke the “ ‘condition vs. cause’ dichotomy.” See Galman, 188 Ill. 2d at 257.
Under the condition/cause analysis, when a plaintiff is injured by the intervening act of a third
party, the defendant can be held liable for the plaintiff’s injury if the defendant’s actions
actually brought about the injury, but not if the defendant’s actions only created a condition
that made the injury possible. Id.; see Thompson v. County of Cook, 154 Ill. 2d 374, 383
(1993); Briske v. Village of Burnham, 379 Ill. 193, 199 (1942); Merlo v. Public Service Co. of
Northern Illinois, 381 Ill. 300, 316-17 (1942).
¶ 31 We can style the analysis by any name; it is the same cause-in-fact analysis. As our
supreme court explained: “[W]hen Briske, Merlo, and Thompson ask whether the defendant’s
conduct was a cause of the injury or simply furnished a condition by which the injury was
made possible, they are in effect asking whether the defendant’s conduct was a material and
substantial element in bringing about the injury.” Galman, 188 Ill. 2d at 259; see Knauerhaze
v. Nelson, 361 Ill. App. 3d 538, 554 (2005) (“[D]efendants’ claim that Dr. Allen’s failure to
terminate the surgery merely created a condition in which an injury could occur is tantamount
to saying that Dr. Allen’s negligence was not the cause in fact of Knauerhaze’s injury ***.”).
¶ 32 Galman itself is a good example. There, a tanker truck was parked illegally on Lawrence
Avenue in Springfield, close to an intersection. Galman, 188 Ill. 2d at 254. The plaintiff’s
decedent was a student at a nearby high school, leaving school for the day. Rather than use the
crosswalk to cross Lawrence, she walked west on the sidewalk along Lawrence for the full
length of the truck, then turned at the front of the massive vehicle and crossed Lawrence at a
45-degree angle. Id. She was hit by a car whose driver couldn’t see her, as she had been
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obscured by the tanker truck. Id. at 255. The plaintiff sued the truck company and the driver,
arguing that his negligence in illegally parking the truck was a proximate cause of the
decedent’s death. Id.¶ 33 The defendants argued that the illegal parking of the vehicle was merely a condition by
which the injury was made possible and the intervening, superseding negligence of the
decedent in jaywalking across Lawrence was the proximate cause of her injuries. Id. at 256-57.
The supreme court, after noting that the condition/cause analysis was simply a restatement of
the cause-in-fact analysis (see id. at 257-59), reiterated that “in deciding whether a defendant’s
conduct was a material and substantial element in bringing about an injury, we ask whether,
absent the defendant’s conduct, that injury still would have occurred.” Id. at 260. That question
was easily answered: “had [the driver] not parked his truck illegally on Lawrence Street, [the
decedent’s] injuries almost certainly would not have occurred.” Id. Thus, the plaintiff had
established that the driver’s negligence was a cause in fact of the decedent’s injuries.
¶ 34 So whatever verbiage defendants use, the analysis ultimately remains the same. Without
question, the accident here would not have occurred absent Kessanti’s conduct in expelling
Kramer and Vega from the Uber vehicle, leaving them to walk home instead of being driven to
their destination. The complaint adequately alleges that Kessanti’s negligence was a material
and substantial factor in causing the injuries alleged here. The complaint sufficiently pleads
cause in fact.
¶ 35 B
¶ 36 “A defendant’s acts are a legal cause only if they are ‘so closely tied to the plaintiff’s injury
that he should be held legally responsible for it.’ ” (Emphasis in original.) Simmons v. Garces,
198 Ill. 2d 541, 558 (2002) (quoting McCraw v. Cegielski, 287 Ill. App. 3d 871, 873 (1996)).
“The question is one of public policy—how far should a defendant’s legal responsibility
extend for conduct that did, in fact, cause the harm?” Young v. Bryco Arms, 213 Ill. 2d 433, 446
(2004). The touchstone of legal causation is foreseeability. City of Chicago v. Beretta U.S.A.
Corp., 213 Ill. 2d 351, 395 (2004).
¶ 37 In cases such as this, where the plaintiff was actually injured by the intervening act of a
third party, the inquiry “is whether the first wrongdoer reasonably might have anticipated the
intervening efficient cause as a natural and probable result of the first party’s own negligence.”
Galman, 188 Ill. 2d at 257. That remains true even if, as here, a defendant argues the
condition/cause theory, which again merely restates the law of proximate cause and is not a
distinct doctrine. See id. at 259 (“[W]hen Briske, Merlo, and Thompson ask whether the
defendant might have reasonably anticipated the intervening efficient cause as a natural and
probable result of his or her own negligence, they are in effect asking whether the intervening
efficient cause was of a type that a reasonable person would see as a likely result of his or her
conduct.”).
¶ 38 So at bottom, the question is whether the intervening, negligent driving of Szczepaniak, in
speeding and failing to yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk, was reasonably foreseeable to
Kessanti (and thus by extension to Uber) after Kessanti ejected Kramer and Vega from the
vehicle far away from their agreed-upon destination.
¶ 39 In so deciding, we must keep in mind our procedural posture. We are at the pleading stage,
where we take the facts as true and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff;
indeed, we may not dismiss a complaint under section 2-615 “unless it clearly appears that no
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set of facts can be proved that would entitle the plaintiff to recovery.” Henderson Square
Condominium Ass’n v. LAB Townhomes, LLC, 2015 IL 118139, ¶ 61. In keeping with that
principle, we have recognized that proximate cause is typically a question of fact; it should
only be decided as a matter of law if the facts alleged demonstrate that a party would never be
entitled to recover. Quirke v. City of Harvey, 266 Ill. App. 3d 664, 668 (1994); Cannon v.
Commonwealth Edison Co., 250 Ill. App. 3d 379, 381-82 (1993).
¶ 40 Again, the complaint alleges that the neighborhood where Kramer and Vega were ejected
was “dark” and “poorly illuminated” and that “certain street lights were not operating.” The
complaint alleges a “high volume of traffic and limited traffic control devices” in this
neighborhood.
¶ 41 The complaint also alleges that, as the events happened at two in the morning, this
neighborhood included “third parties departing various drinking establishments and in ***
various states of insobriety, aggression or unsafe state of mind,” where cars “were speeding
and driving dangerously.” And this neighborhood “lacked a visible police or law enforcement
presence.”
¶ 42 The complaint thus alleges that, when Kramer and Vega were wrongly expelled from the
Uber vehicle at two in the morning, they were forced to walk through a poorly lit area with
limited traffic-control devices at a time when a fair number of intoxicated individuals were
leaving bars and taverns. They were forced to cross streets in a high-traffic area where drivers
were proceeding aggressively, and the likelihood of intoxicated drivers was as high as it would
be at any time of the day or night. In this context, drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of
plaintiffs, can we say that the danger of being hit by a car was so remote as to be unforeseeable
as a matter of law? Our answer is no.
¶ 43 What, after all, would a reasonable person consider to be a foreseeable fear for someone
who was abandoned on the side of the road under the circumstances alleged here—a dark,
high-traffic urban area populated with bars and taverns at a time when individuals are leaving
those drinking establishments?
¶ 44 One obvious concern would be the fear of crime—an assault or mugging. Another might be
exposure to the elements, if the weather were sufficiently severe; say, for example, the
passenger was forced to walk the rest of the way to her destination on an icy sidewalk and,
while doing so, slipped and fell and sustained injuries. See, e.g., Trevino v. Flash Cab Co., 272
Ill. App. 3d 1022, 1030 (1995) (proximate causal relationship between taxi driver’s wrongful
ejection of passenger far from agreed-upon destination and passenger’s subsequent fall on icy,
snowy sidewalk was question of fact not amenable to summary judgment). Yet another might
be the act of walking itself, if the passenger were not sufficiently able to walk and thus was
injured as a result of being forced to do so. See, e.g., Ingham v. Luxor Cab Co., 93 Cal. Rptr. 2d
587, 594 (Ct. App. 2001) (taxi wrongfully ejected enfeebled passenger from vehicle far from
destination; passenger fell while walking and suffered injuries; whether taxi’s ejection was
proximate cause of injuries was question of fact precluding summary judgment).
¶ 45 But a reasonable person might be concerned, as well, with being forced to cross major city
streets (such as Kedzie Street, where the accident occurred) under these circumstances. It is no
stretch to imagine that people leaving bars and taverns in “various states of insobriety” (as
alleged here) might get behind the wheel of a car, and the risks of that unfortunate combination
is not at all hard to imagine. See, e.g., Westin Operator, LLC v. Groh, 2015 CO 25, ¶¶ 34-35
(“A reasonable person could foresee that a group of intoxicated individuals evicted from a
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hotel might be involved in a drunk driving accident that causes injuries.”); Cullum v. McCool,
432 S.W.3d 829, 835 (Tenn. 2013) (“The risk of harm presented by a belligerent, intoxicated
person operating a motor vehicle is foreseeable. It is common knowledge that drunk driving
directly results in accidents, injuries and deaths.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.)).
¶ 46 Most of us have urged those close to us (or been urged by them) to take greater care on the
roads late at night or in the wee hours of the morning, especially on weekends as here, some
version of the “you-never-who-might-be-driving-at-that-time-of-night” speech. That concern
would be at its peak if the route the expelled passenger was forced to take, by foot, was a
poorly lit, high-traffic area where people were leaving bars and taverns and where cars were
already speeding and operating recklessly, as alleged here.
¶ 47 The context matters. The facts matter. The danger to a pedestrian of being hit by a car
would undoubtedly vary if we posited, for example, a passenger being expelled from the Uber
vehicle in the middle of an interstate highway at midnight, versus being stranded in a deserted,
rural town in broad daylight. This case obviously falls between those extremes. But taking the
allegations here as true and drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of plaintiffs, we cannot
say that the risk to Kramer and Vega of being hit by a reckless driver’s car was so clearly
unforeseeable as to be something we can decide at the pleading stage.
¶ 48 Our holding is consistent with the voluminous case law on the subject of intervening
causation. Defendants rely heavily on two decisions of our supreme court, neither of which is
inconsistent with our conclusion.
¶ 49 One that we already discussed above, in our cause-in-fact analysis, is Galman, 188 Ill. 2d at
254-255, where the student came from behind the defendant’s parked tanker truck and
jaywalked across Lawrence Avenue, only to be struck and killed by a driver who did not see
her, given that she had been obscured by the truck. The supreme court found that plaintiff
proved cause in fact but ultimately held that the plaintiff could not prove legal causation. The
chain of legal causation was broken, the court ruled, by the decedent’s negligence in
jaywalking across Lawrence Avenue, not to mention doing so after emerging from behind a
large truck that shielded her from the view of oncoming traffic. Id. at 262. The court reasoned
that “nothing in [the driver’s conduct in parking that truck near the intersection] increased the
likelihood that a pedestrian would forgo an open crosswalk in favor of an obstructed and
unlawful mid-block crossing.” Id.; see also id. at 262 n.2.
¶ 50 That well-reasoned decision is perfectly compatible with our holding. The decedent there
easily could have used the crosswalk; the parked tanker truck didn’t prevent her from doing so.
Her decision to jaywalk, and to do so while being obscured by the truck, was the decedent’s
decision alone, not caused in any way by the presence of the truck. The presence of the truck
did nothing to set in motion a sequence of events. Here, in contrast, while Kessanti did not
cause Szczepaniak to drive recklessly, he absolutely forced Kramer and Vega into a position
where they would be vulnerable to that negligent driving. And we would add that Galman was
decided after a trial, after a full airing of all available and relevant evidence, unlike here.
¶ 51 Defendants also cite Abrams, 211 Ill. 2d 251. The plaintiff called 911 to request an
ambulance, as she was going into labor, with labor pains 10 minutes apart. Id. at 253. The
dispatcher told the plaintiff that the situation was not an emergency and ended the call. Id.After the plaintiff’s sister placed a second 911 call, a different dispatcher explained that labor
pains at 10-minute intervals were not a medical emergency. Id. at 253-54. The plaintiff then
unsuccessfully tried to enlist the services of a private ambulance company. Id. at 254-55. At
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that point, the plaintiff called a friend, who agreed to drive the plaintiff to the hospital. Id. at
255.
¶ 52 On the way to the hospital, the friend’s car approached the intersection of King Drive and
Pershing. Id. Holding down the car horn to announce her approach, the friend entered the
intersection on a red light, where she collided with a vehicle driven by Gregory Jones. Id. Jones
was driving between 75 to 80 miles per hour at the time of the collision, and he admitted that,
prior to the accident, he’d ingested crack cocaine, a beer, and two shots of rum. Id. As a result
of the accident, the plaintiff was severely injured and spent two weeks in a coma; her baby died
after delivery. Id.¶ 53 The plaintiff sued the City of Chicago for refusing to provide her with ambulance service.
Id. The circuit court awarded summary judgment to the City, reasoning that the City’s conduct
was not the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injuries. The appellate court reversed on the issue
of proximate cause, but our supreme court reversed the appellate court and affirmed summary
judgment for the city, reasoning:
“[W]e conclude as a matter of law that the City could not have reasonably anticipated
that a refusal to send an ambulance when labor pains are 10 minutes apart would likely
result in plaintiff’s driver running a red light at the same time that a substance-impaired
driver was speeding through the intersection on a suspended license. Millions of
women in labor make it safely to the hospital each year by private transportation. Thus,
plaintiff was in no peril greater than that faced by women each day who make it safely
to the hospital without the aid of an ambulance. The legal causes of the injury here were
the two drivers in willful violation of the traffic laws, and not anything the City did or
did not do. While all traffic accidents are to some extent remotely foreseeable
[citation], this is not the kind of harm that was sufficiently foreseeable from the refusal
to send an ambulance so as to satisfy the ‘legal cause’ portion of a proximate cause
analysis.” Id. at 261-62.
¶ 54 Abrams is easily distinguishable. First and most obviously, Abrams arrived in the supreme
court in a different procedural posture; the circuit court resolved the issue of proximate cause at
summary judgment, not the pleading stage. Second, the intervening negligence there involved
not one but two different drivers—one a drunk driver going at least twice the speed limit, the
other who deliberately ran a red light. And third, it was difficult to see how this negligence
could be foreseen as a result of a hospital’s failure to send an ambulance. As the court noted,
women in labor routinely use private transportation, and the evidence showed that the plaintiff
was not in a medical emergency. The hospital’s conduct did not set in motion a chain of events;
it did nothing to worsen the plaintiff’s position. As we have already explained, we cannot say
the same of Kessanti’s negligence here.
¶ 55 The gist of defendants’ argument, citing those supreme court cases and others we will
address, is that “negligent driving” breaks the causal chain between the first defendant’s
negligence and a plaintiff’s injuries “as a matter of law.” That is often the case. But it is not
always the case. And it is certainly not always a conclusion we can reach at the pleading stage.
Like Galman and Abrams, most of the cases that find a lack of foreseeability “as a matter of
law” do so at the summary judgment stage or after trial—that is, after the parties have had the
opportunity to develop a record and put forth their best evidence.
¶ 56 First of all, as to the intervening cause: “Negligent driving” is not some one-size-fits-all
proposition. It is not a talismanic phrase that will break every causal chain in every situation.
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Some driving, to be sure, is so negligent that we might say it was beyond reasonable
anticipation. For example, a driver’s negligence in driving on a prohibited portion of the road
under construction, followed by an illegal U-turn into oncoming traffic that caused an accident,
could not be a reasonably foreseeable result of a city doing nothing more than performing
construction work on the road and narrowing down the lanes of traffic to a single lane in each
direction. Newsome v. Thompson, 202 Ill. App. 3d 1074, 1081-82 (1990). We said that as a
matter of law, however, only after noting that the facts in that case were “largely undisputed.”
Id. at 1081.
¶ 57 The likelihood that a driver would be so negligent as to swerve over a median and cross
onto the other side of the road was so minimal as to be unforeseeable as a matter of
law—though we so held in affirming summary judgment, after the parties had taken extensive
discovery, including fact and expert testimony. In re Estate of Elfayer, 325 Ill. App. 3d 1076,
1083-84 (2001). Nor is it foreseeable that a drunk driver, in an attempt to elude the police,
would travel 80 to 85 miles per hour in a 35-mile-per-hour zone, though the supreme court
rendered that judgment after a trial. Thompson, 154 Ill. 2d at 382-83.
¶ 58 In those cases, the intervening actions of the driver were so beyond the ordinary
expectation of drivers that the defendant municipalities could not be expected to reasonably
anticipate them.
¶ 59 But some “negligent driving” could be reasonably foreseeable. Take Bentley v. Saunemin
Township, 83 Ill. 2d 10 (1980). The plaintiff’s decedent was driving on a gravel road when he
approached State Highway 47. Id. at 12-13. Despite the obvious nature of the major
intersection, the driver failed to stop, entered the highway, and collided with an oncoming
vehicle. Id. at 12. Plaintiff blamed the township, because there was a stop sign but it was
obscured by branches of a tree. Id. Nevertheless, a jury found the driver’s negligence, in failing
to yield at the intersection, to be the sole proximate cause of the collision and returned a verdict
for the township. Id. at 11.
¶ 60 Despite the deferential standard accorded to a jury verdict, our supreme court reversed and
held that, while the driver’s conduct was negligent, it was not the only cause of the accident.
The court rejected the township’s argument that the negligent driving was a superseding,
intervening cause relieving the township of liability, holding instead that the driver’s
negligence in failing to appreciate the upcoming hazard was a foreseeable result of the
township’s failure to provide a fully visible stop sign. Id. at 15. The court did “not consider it
reasonable to absolve defendants of responsibility because of [the driver’s] shortcomings in
dealing with a situation created by defendants’ own negligence.” Id. The court elaborated,
quoting Professor Prosser:
“ ‘The risk created by the defendant may include the intervention of the foreseeable
negligence of others. *** [T]he standard of reasonable conduct may require the
defendant to protect the plaintiff against ‘that occasional negligence which is one of the
ordinary incidents of human life, and therefore to be anticipated.’ Thus a defendant
who blocks the sidewalk and forces the plaintiff to walk in a street where he will be
exposed to the risks of heavy traffic becomes liable when he is run down by a car, even
though the car is negligently driven; and one who parks his automobile on the highway
without lights at night is not relieved of responsibility when another negligently drives
into it. By the same token, one who spills gasoline can expect it to be negligently set
afire, and when a drunken passenger is ejected from a bus into the midst of traffic it
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may be anticipated that he will be negligently run down.’ ” Id. at 16 (quoting William
L. Prosser, Handbook of the Law of Torts, § 44, at 272-74 (4th ed. 1971)).
¶ 61 Likewise, we held that a driver’s negligence in failing to yield to an emergency vehicle—a
police car—could be viewed by a jury as a foreseeable result of a defendant’s activation of a
false alarm at a bank that caused the squad car to respond and thus dismissal at the pleading
stage was inappropriate. Duncan v. Rzonca, 133 Ill. App. 3d 184, 204 (1985). We have noted
that distracted driving, for another example, “can supply a basis for calling a driver negligent
or careless, and no rational thinker could think such conduct would be legally unforeseeable”
in a legal causation analysis. Martinelli v. City of Chicago, 2013 IL App (1st) 113040, ¶ 30.
¶ 62 We also held that the negligence of a driver in failing to see (and thus obey) a stop sign,
resulting in a collision, could be a foreseeable result of a church’s sponsorship of a treasure
hunt that allowed participants to drive to various clue locations and encouraged fast and
distracted driving by rewarding the first team to finish. See Indlecoffer v. Village of
Wadsworth, 282 Ill. App. 3d 933, 942-43 (1996). Thus, we said there, “under the facts of this
case as alleged in the *** amended complaint, we cannot say, as a matter of law, that the
purported intervening acts were the kind of new and independent force that would break the
causal connection between [defendant’s] alleged negligence and plaintiffs’ injuries.” Id. at
943.
¶ 63 So it’s not enough to simply argue that the driver who struck Kramer and Vega was
“driving negligently,” that Uber and its driver could not be expected to foresee negligent
driving, and thus the causal chain was snapped the moment a negligent driver entered the
picture. We must consider, among other things, the particulars of the “negligent driving.”
¶ 64 Here, because we have an undeveloped record and only a complaint’s allegations, we know
very little about Szczepaniak’s alleged negligence. The complaint tells us he struck Kramer
and Vega as they were walking across Kedzie Street in a crosswalk. It tells us the driver drove
his car “at a speed greater than reasonable and proper with regard to traffic conditions and the
use of the roadway,” that he “failed to decrease speed to avoid colliding with” Kramer and
Vega, and he failed to yield to pedestrians. The complaint later adds that Szczepaniak was
“traveling over the speed limit,” but we do not know if he exceeded the limit by 5 miles or 45
miles per hour. We don’t even know what the speed limit was.
¶ 65 The complaint tells us that the driver failed to yield to pedestrians in the sidewalk, but we
do not know the details. Did he blow through a red light? Disobey a stop sign? How visible
were the pedestrians to the driver? If that intersection did not have a traffic-control device and
if it was dark, Szczepaniak might argue that he was unable to see the pedestrians until it was
too late.
¶ 66 We cannot pretend that those details do not matter. Of course, they do. The amount we do
not know about this accident far exceeds what we do. Ruling as a matter of law without
knowing these details is not appropriate. See, e.g., Chevrie v. Gruesen, 208 Ill. App. 3d 881,
884 (1991) (reversing summary judgment, as “[b]oth the question of a proper lookout and of
speed appropriate to conditions are generally questions for the jury to decide”); O’Brien v.
Hertl, 238 Ill. App. 3d 217, 221-22 (1992) (refusing to overturn jury’s causation
determination, as questions of proper lookout and speed appropriate to conditions are usually
questions of fact for jury); Santschi v. Gorter, 63 Ill. App. 3d 394, 397 (1978) (reversing
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summary judgment; though facts were “uncontroverted,” they were capable of more than one
conclusion as to whether defendant failed to keep proper lookout for oncoming vehicles).1
¶ 67 In addition to considering the nature of the so-called intervening cause, we must also
consider the nature of the wrongdoing of the first defendant in the causal chain. In the cases we
have discussed above that absolved the first wrongdoer of liability because of a break in the
causal chain, the original actor merely failed to do something, like failing to erect a crash-proof
median (Elfayer), failing to warn of a curve in the road or of the possibility of an illegal U-turn
(Thompson, Newsome), failing to send an ambulance in a nonemergent situation (Abrams), or
simply parking a truck illegally (Galman). Nothing those defendants did, or failed to do, set in
motion a chain of events of any kind. Indeed, no danger was within reasonable contemplation
until a new force intervened—and a rather unusual and dramatic intervening force, at that. To
use the vernacular of the condition/cause case law, “ ‘the forces set in operation by the
defendant ha[d] come to a rest in a position of apparent safety, and some new force
intervene[d].’ ” Orrico v. Beverly Bank, 109 Ill. App. 3d 102, 108 (1982) (quoting William L.
Prosser, Handbook of the Law of Torts, § 42, at 247-48 (4th ed. 1971)).
¶ 68 Consider, on the other hand, the cases we discussed above that found that the intervening
act of negligent driving did not absolve the original tortfeasor of liability. In those cases, the
effects of the negligence of the first actor had not come to rest in a position of safety.
¶ 69 For example, the failure to trim branches to avoid obscuring a stop sign led the driver to not
realize he was supposed to stop at the state highway, even though the driver shared some of the
blame for not making that determination on his own. Bentley, 83 Ill. 2d at 15. Sending people
off on a vehicular treasure hunt, where speed was rewarded, set in motion a chain of events
where people drove their cars fast and while distracted, spending as much as time looking for
clues from their car than watching out for stop signs; so while the driver would share some of
the blame for not noticing a stop sign, the sponsor of the treasure hunt could not escape blame
altogether. Indlecoffer, 282 Ill. App. 3d at 943. The effects of the defendant’s negligence in
falsely activating the robbery alarm at the bank caused a police officer to respond quickly to an
emergency, which led to a collision with another car that negligently failed to yield to a police
officer on an emergency call. Duncan, 133 Ill. App. 3d at 204. We specifically noted that the
“ ‘forces set in operation’ ” there, the false activation of the alarm, would not have “ ‘come to
rest in a position of apparent safety’ ” until the risk of harm created by the false alarm had
passed—that is, when the police officer “arrived safely at the bank.” Id. Both the negligent
driver and the defendant who activated the false alarm could share in the blame, and thus it was
error to decide proximate cause at the pleading stage. Id.
1
Defendants tell us that Szczepaniak was driving while intoxicated at the time of the accident. The
complaint says nothing of that fact, and we are limited at this stage to its well-pleaded allegations. See
Provenzale v. Forister, 318 Ill. App. 3d 869, 878 (2001). Defendants say that we can judicially notice
that Szczepaniak is incarcerated. So we can, but the only entry we have found from the Illinois
Department of Corrections (IDOC) indicates that Szczepaniak was convicted of failing to report an
accident involving injury, which is consistent with the complaint’s allegations that Szczepaniak left the
scene after his vehicle struck Kramer and Vega. The IDOC entry says nothing about intoxication. So at
this stage, we do not “know” that the driver was intoxicated. We highly doubt that defendants are
attempting to mislead us, which only underscores that there is still much to know about the details of
this case.
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¶ 70 The wrongdoing alleged here by Kessanti is nothing like the negligence of those
defendants who were absolved of liability in the cases above and is far more analogous to the
decisions that refused, as a matter of law, to find the causal chain broken. Kessanti’s
negligence was not passive. He did not merely fail to warn of a danger or park his car illegally.
His wrongdoing was active. He dumped two passengers on the side of the road in the city of
Chicago in the middle of the night amid dark, high-traffic streets. He materially worsened their
position. At the time they were struck by the vehicle, Kramer and Vega were still “dealing with
a situation created by [Kessanti’s] own negligence.” Bentley, 83 Ill. 2d at 15. Just as the police
car in Duncan would not have come to rest in a “position of apparent safety” (Duncan, 133 Ill.
App. 3d at 204) until the vehicle had arrived safely at the bank, so too, the effects of Kessanti’s
negligence would not have come to rest in a “position of safety” until Kramer and Vega made
it home safely—the very service Kessanti had promised to provide them.
¶ 71 To repeat, there can be more than one proximate cause of an injury. Bentley, 83 Ill. 2d at
17; Douglas, 2018 IL App (1st) 162962, ¶ 34. This is not always a zero-sum game. We are not
automatically forced to choose whether liability falls on the intervening negligent driving or
the original wrongdoer’s conduct; in some cases, it could be that both defendants’ conduct was
a cause. As our supreme court said, quoting Professor Prosser, if you eject a passenger from a
bus amid traffic, it might be reasonably foreseeable that the person will be hit by a negligent
driver. Bentley, 83 Ill. 2d at 16. If you prematurely expel a passenger from a taxi when the
conditions are cold and icy, it might be reasonably foreseeable that the passenger will walk
without due care for her safety and thus slip and fall on an icy sidewalk. Trevino, 272 Ill. App.
3d at 1030. Both actors could be responsible in part for the resulting injuries.
¶ 72 Here, at least so far as we can discern from nothing more than a complaint, a jury could
reasonably conclude that both defendants were at fault. Szczepaniak could be liable for unsafe,
reckless driving, but Uber and its driver could be liable for thrusting Kramer and Vega into a
position where they had to cross that street in the first place.
¶ 73 In sum, we know far too little about the details of the “negligent driving” of Szczepaniak,
as well as the conditions that night, to hold that Szczepaniak’s conduct was so beyond the pale
as to be unforeseeable as a matter of law, at the pleading stage. And because Kessanti’s
wrongful ejection of Kramer and Vega forced them into the very situation that required them to
cross a major, dimly lit street at two in the morning, it would be premature to hold, as a matter
of law, that Kessanti’s conduct played no role whatsoever in their injuries.
¶ 74 We are not holding that Szczepaniak’s alleged negligent driving was reasonably
foreseeable or that Kessanti’s actions were a proximate cause of this incident. At this early
stage, with so many critical facts missing, it would be inappropriate to reach a conclusion as a
matter of law, one way or the other. We hold only that questions of fact exist, precluding
dismissal. We reverse the dismissal of counts II through VII and remand for further
proceedings.
¶ 75 II
¶ 76 Three final points. First, although Kramer appealed the dismissal of the counts against
Bachir and Cab Investment Group, Inc., neither of those defendants appeared in this court or
otherwise participated in the appeal. But the dismissal of the counts against them was based on
the same argument as those against Uber and Kessanti. We can decide an appeal without the
benefit of an appellee’s brief, particularly when we have excellent briefs on the same issue
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from the other appellees. See First Capitol Mortgage Corp. v. Talandis Construction Corp., 63
Ill. 2d 128, 133 (1976). Our disposition of this appeal applies to all counts dismissed.
¶ 77 Second, we note that Uber has advanced arguments in its appellate brief that Kramer’s
claims arising under various provisions of the Chicago Municipal Code are defective for
reasons other than lack of proximate cause. The circuit court never ruled on those arguments,
and we decline to do so in the first instance.
¶ 78 Third, we note Kramer’s argument on appeal that dismissal was inappropriate because
certain documents that he believes were relevant to the issue of foreseeability were not
produced by Uber. As we have reversed the judgment below for a different reason, that
question is not necessary for us to decide here. We trust that the circuit court’s limitation on
discovery was grounded in the fact that the discovery was taking place at the pleading stage,
before the parties were even at issue. Now that we have remanded for further proceedings, and
more traditional and liberal discovery will soon commence, we assume the trial court would
revisit any discussion about limitations on discovery.
¶ 79 CONCLUSION
¶ 80 The circuit court’s judgment is reversed. The cause is remanded for further proceedings.
¶ 81 Reversed and remanded.
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