v. Atlas Energy, 2021 COA 24

On a December evening in 2017 a truck leaked oil onto I-76, prompting officials to close both lanes and divert traffic to an exit about 0.3 miles from the spill.
About 15 minutes after the closure (roughly 40 minutes after the initial leak), Grantland Deines slowed for stopped traffic and was rear-ended by Omar Campa-Borrego, sustaining catastrophic injuries.
Deines sued Atlas Energy, Anadarko, CDI, and the truck driver, alleging their negligence caused the spill and thus his injuries.
Defendants moved for summary judgment, arguing Campa-Borrego’s inattentive driving was an unforeseeable, independent intervening cause that broke causation.
The district court granted summary judgment for defendants, focusing on temporal/spatial distance, that other drivers allegedly stopped safely, and that Campa-Borrego’s conduct was extraordinary.
The Court of Appeals reversed, holding proximate cause/foreseeability is typically a jury question evaluated from the defendant’s perspective and based on the totality of circumstances.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether defendants’ negligence in spilling oil was proximately connected to Deines’s injuries or whether the later rear-end collision was an unforeseeable intervening cause such that summary judgment was proper	Deines: A rational jury could conclude the collision was a foreseeable consequence of creating a hazardous condition on the highway; proximate cause is a fact question	Defendants: The collision occurred later, at a different location, and due to another driver’s inattentiveness — an unforeseeable intervening act that severs causation	Reversed: Foreseeability/proximate cause must be assessed from totality of circumstances and defendant’s perspective; a jury could find the collision foreseeable, so summary judgment was improper
Whether Anadarko independently was entitled to summary judgment because Deines did not prove that Anadarko’s precautions would have prevented the spill or because the wellsite conduct was too remote	Deines: At summary judgment, his allegations about Anadarko’s loading/securing failures were accepted as true; proximate-cause issue remains	Anadarko: Deines failed to show its measures would have prevented the spill; its conduct was too remote from the highway release	Rejected: At summary judgment Deines’s allegations stand; Anadarko’s remoteness argument is undeveloped and insufficient to bar the claim

Smith v. State Comp. Ins. Fund, 749 P.2d 462 (Colo. App. 1987) (example where intervening conduct was unforeseeable as matter of law)
Ekberg v. Greene, 588 P.2d 375 (Colo. 1978) (foreseeability ordinarily for the jury even where intervening act was intentional/criminal)
Albo v. Shamrock Oil & Gas Corp., 415 P.2d 536 (Colo. 1966) (intervening cause doctrine and natural-probable-consequence analysis)
Banyai v. Arruda, 799 P.2d 441 (Colo. App. 1990) (second-accident-after-road-hazard: foreseeability a jury question)
Walcott v. Total Petroleum, Inc., 964 P.2d 609 (Colo. App. 1998) (intentional, extraordinary intervening act may break causation)
Estate of Newton v. McNew, 698 P.2d 835 (Colo. App. 1984) (series of intervening acts did not necessarily preclude jury finding of foreseeability)
Baumann v. Zhukov, 802 F.3d 950 (8th Cir. 2015) (example of courts finding temporal gap supported summary judgment)
Cooke v. Nationwide Mut. Fire Ins. Co., 14 So. 3d 1192 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2009) (other-jurisdictions’ decision treating foreseeability as jury question despite time/distance)