We granted certiorari in this case to consider whether the trial court erred in charging the jury that proximate cause is “sometimes called the dominant cause.”1 The Court of Appeals noted that the use of the phrase “dominant cause” had been disapproved in this State, but it found no reversible error in the use of the phrase in this case. Because we conclude that the use of the dominant cause language was error, and because we conclude that it was not harmless, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals. In this medical malpractice action, the issue was whether the plaintiff’s anesthesiologist committed malpractice by failing to stop the plaintiff’s surgeon from beginning the operation or by failing to take corrective measures in the operating room once the surgeon allegedly had broken the sterile field. After the surgery, the plaintiff developed an infection and had to have multiple corrective and cosmetic surgeries. The plaintiff settled with the surgeon, and the case against the anesthesiologist went to trial. At trial, the trial court charged the jury, among other things, that proximate cause “is sometimes called the dominant cause.” The plaintiff objected to the charge. The jury subsequently returned a verdict in favor of the anesthesiologist, and the Court of Appeals affirmed, finding no reversible error in the trial court’s charge.2
Although this Court has never addressed the propriety of the dominant cause language, the Court of Appeals has disapproved the use of the charge on several occasions before the present case.3 For example, in Joiner , the defendant requested a charge on proximate cause that contained the phrase “dominant cause.” The trial court refused to give the charge, and the Court of Appeals affirmed, ruling that the phrase implied that there could be only one proximate cause of an injury; that, however, there may be more than one proximate cause of an injury, particularly in cases involving more than one tortfeasor; and that the charge in question therefore could confuse and mislead the jury.4 In this same vein, a leading treatise states that there may be more than one proximate cause of an injury and that, for this reason, “instructions to the jury that they must find the defendant’s conduct to be . . . ‘the dominant cause’ . . . of the plaintiff’s injury are rightly condemned as misleading error.”5 As explained by the Minnesota Supreme Court, instructing a jury that “proximate cause is the dominant cause is clearly erroneous since a cause is dominant only if it excludes and overshadows all other causes.”6 Moreover, for this reason, the use of the term “dominant cause” in cases involving several alleged tortfeasors is contrary to the general principle of tort law in this State that one tortfeasor may be liable for the acts of a subsequent tortfeasor if he could have foreseen or anticipated the negligent acts of the subsequent tortfeasor.7
