Torts - Cases, Principles, and Institutions Fifth Edition, 2016a

Witt & Tani, TCPI 7. Proximate Cause
such a rule. A further example arises out of the phenomenon of negligent medical care that
exacerbates the initial harm caused by a tortfeasor.
In Stoleson v. United States, Judge Posner reviewed the claim of Helen Stoleson—the
woman with the “dynamite heart” as Time Magazine described her in 1971. Stoleson developed a
heart condition caused by exposure to nitroglycerine in the munitions plant at which she worked.
After bringing a tort claim against the federal government for negligently failing to protect
employees at the plant from overexposure to nitroglycerine, Stoleson was awarded $53,000 in
compensatory damages for her heart condition. However, the federal district judge rejected her
claim for damages arising out of the hypochondriacal symptoms that ensued. Although Judge
Posner upheld the district judge, he noted that Stoleson would have had a good claim if she could
have shown the hypochondriacal symptoms to have been caused by “the treatment—even the
negligent treatment—of the injury” by a third party such as a treating physician:
If a pedestrian who has been run down by a car is taken to a hospital and because of
the hospital’s negligence incurs greater medical expenses or suffers more pain and
suffering than he would have if the hospital had not been negligent, he can collect
his incremental as well as his original damages from the person who ran him down,
since they would have been avoided if that person had used due care. So here, if the
government had been careful Mrs. Stoleson would have had no occasion to consult
Dr. Lange and might therefore not have become a hypochondriac.
Stoleson v. United States, 708 F.2d 1217, 1221 (7th Cir. 1983).
The principle described by Posner in Stoleson is well-established in the common law of
torts, and it has been widely applied not just to downstream injuries arising out of negligent
medical treatment, but also to downstream injuries arising out of negligent transportation.
Consider Pridham v. Cash & Carry Building Center, a wrongful death case. In Pridham,
the decedent was shopping at a retail building supplies store when paneling fell on him, knocking
him down and covering his body. As the court described, it, “When the panels were removed,
[decedent] lay flat on his back on the floor, his head in a pool of blood.” Decedent “was placed
on an orthopedic stretcher which was in turn placed upon the ambulance cot and carried into the
vehicle.” En route to the hospital, however, the driver suffered a heart attack, causing the
ambulance “to swerve from the road and strike a tree. The cot was pushed forward through the
glass partition separating the driver compartment from the rear of the ambulance.” The decedent
died later that same day.
The trial court in Pridham charged the jury that “if the defendant is liable to the plaintiffdecedent
in this case, he is also liable for any additional bodily harm resulting from normal efforts
of third persons in rendering aid . . . which the other’s injury reasonably requires irrespective of
whether such acts are done in a proper or in a negligent manner. . . . [I]f you . . . find the injuries
suffered in the ambulance crash were as a result of a normal effort of third persons in rendering
aid which the decedent Pridham required, then the defendant would be liable to the plaintiff for
those [injuries].” The New Hampshire Supreme Court upheld the instruction:
The instruction given by the trial court is based on the principle that if a tortfeasor’s
negligence causes harm to another which requires the victim to receive medical,
surgical or hospital services and additional bodily harm results from a normal effort
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