John Stone—Senior Attorney, National Legal Research Group

            A youth mentor brought a 12-year-old boy to his farm for a weekend of outdoor activities, where he allowed the boy to drive an all-terrain vehicle ("ATV") without a helmet or supervision. When the boy suffered permanent serious injuries, including a brain injury and partial blindness, after he lost control of the ATV, he sued the mentor for negligent entrustment and supervision. A trial court granted summary judgment dismissing the suit, concluding that the Minnesota Nonprofit Corporations Act immunized the defendant from civil liability for his alleged negligence.

            An appellate court reversed the lower court because the Act applies only to a volunteer's actions that are undertaken "within the scope of the person's responsibilities as a[n] . . . agent[.]" Hogan v. Brass, No. A20-0846, 2021 WL 852073 (Minn. Ct. App. Mar. 8, 2021). In this case, the nonprofit organization through which the mentor and the boy became associated connected adult mentors with children affected by a parent's incarceration. It provided only same-day mentoring services, encouraging each volunteer mentor to connect with the child on a weekly basis for one to four hours. In various ways, the organization expressly declined a role in interactions that involve overnight or extended arrangements.

John Stone, Senior Attorney, National Legal Research Group

            According to the "intervening causes doctrine," there can be no proximate cause, as is required for liability in a negligence case, where there has intervened between the act of the defendant and the injury to the plaintiff an independent act or omission of someone other than the defendant, that was not foreseeable by the defendant, was not triggered by the defendant's act, and was sufficient of itself to cause the injury. As a general rule, suicide is deemed an unforeseeable intervening cause of death that absolves the tortfeasor of negligence liability in an action for wrongful death.

            When a mother brought an action against a city and its police officer for wrongful death arising out of her teenage daughter's suicide death, after the officer's disclosure of photographs of the daughter's body following her previous suicide attempt, the claim failed because of the intervening cause doctrine.  City of Richmond Hill v. Maia, No. S16G1337, 2017 WL 2332660 (Ga. May 30, 2017).