Opinion
July 31, 1995
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Suffolk County (Seidell, J.).
Ordered that the order is affirmed, with one bill of costs to the respondents appearing separately and filing separate briefs.
This action arises from an automobile accident in which the defendant Arcadio Gutierrez lost control of the motor vehicle that he was operating while he was intoxicated and crashed into a delicatessen, injuring the plaintiff. The plaintiff contends that the respondents were negligent because they had not erected a protective barrier around the outside of the delicatessen, which would have halted Gutierrez's automobile.
When the evidence of the cause of an accident is undisputed, the question of whether the defendant's act or omission was a proximate cause of the accident is one for the court and not the jury (see, Rivera v. Goldstein, 152 A.D.2d 556). Ordinarily, the defendant has no duty to prevent a third party from causing harm to another unless the intervening act that caused the plaintiff's injuries was a normal or foreseeable consequence of the situation created by the defendant's negligence (see, Boltax v. Joy Day Camp, 67 N.Y.2d 617).
Unquestionably, a proximate cause of the accident in this case was that Gutierrez lost control of his motor vehicle, causing it to crash into the delicatessen and to strike the plaintiff. Moreover, the plaintiff failed to demonstrate that the respondents could have reasonably foreseen that an out-of-control motor vehicle would strike a patron in the delicatessen (see, Rivera v. Goldstein, supra; Marcroft v. Carvel Corp., 120 A.D.2d 651). Bracken, J.P., Rosenblatt, Krausman and Goldstein, JJ., concur.