Wood v. UPS, 496 P.3d 139

A UPS truck backed into a KNS warehouse 1 week to 1 month before the injury, damaging anchors that held a 100–140 lb vinyl curtain over a loading bay.
A KNS employee (Barney) tightened some remaining anchors but could not replace missing anchors; KNS took no further effective remediation.
Hours before the injury, KNS’s VP saw the curtain hanging at an angle and did nothing; later the curtain and its bracket fell and struck delivery driver Stuart Wood, causing serious injuries.
The Woods sued KNS and UPS; they settled with KNS and proceeded against UPS. UPS moved for summary judgment arguing no duty and no proximate cause; the district court granted summary judgment on both grounds.
The court of appeals affirmed on the ground UPS owed no duty. The Utah Supreme Court vacated that duty holding but affirmed summary judgment on the alternate ground that KNS’s negligence was a superseding intervening cause cutting off UPS’s liability.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether UPS owed a continuing duty to Wood at the time of injury	UPS’s initial accident created a duty that continued to Wood	Any duty shifted to KNS once KNS controlled the premises and became aware of the hazard	Court vacated appellate duty holding; did not decide duty question on merits
Whether KNS’s subsequent negligence was a superseding/intervening cause (proximate cause)	KNS’s inadequate repairs and failure to warn/secure were foreseeable; causation is generally a jury question	KNS’s repeated failures were unforeseeable and highly extraordinary, breaking causal link from UPS	KNS’s conduct was a superseding cause as a matter of law; cut off UPS liability
Whether summary judgment was appropriate	A jury could reasonably find foreseeability and deny superseding cause	No reasonable jury could find UPS reasonably foresaw KNS’s prolonged abdication of its duty	Summary judgment affirmed for UPS on superseding-cause ground

Godesky v. Provo City Corp., 690 P.2d 541 (Utah 1984) (foreseeability of intervening negligence may preclude summary judgment)
Williams v. Melby, 699 P.2d 723 (Utah 1985) (temporal proximity alone does not establish superseding cause; foreseeability inquiry may go to jury)
Rodriguez v. Kroger Co., 422 P.3d 815 (Utah 2018) (landowner has nondelegable duty to keep premises reasonably safe for invitees)
Harris v. Utah Transit Auth., 671 P.2d 217 (Utah 1983) (negligence of another is intervening only if not foreseeable)
Kilpatrick v. Wiley, Rein & Fielding, 909 P.2d 1283 (Utah Ct. App. 1996) (defining intervening cause as independent and not reasonably foreseeable)
Steffensen v. Smith’s Mgmt. Corp., 820 P.2d 482 (Utah Ct. App. 1991) (proximate cause defined as efficient cause in continuous sequence)
PC Riverview, LLC v. Xiao-Yan Cao, 424 P.3d 162 (Utah 2017) (appellate review for correctness; appellate courts may affirm on any legal ground apparent in the record)