Fuller v. Preis
Court of Appeals of New York
322 N.E.2d 263 (N.Y. 1974)
Dr. Lewis suffered a head injury in a car accident caused by the defendants, including Preis, and over the following seven months experienced 38 epileptic seizures. On one day, after three seizures and becoming unresponsive to his daughter, Lewis locked himself in the bathroom, was overheard saying "I must do it," and killed himself. The executor of his estate, Fuller (plaintiff), sued for wrongful death, and the trial court found for the executor; the Appellate Division set aside the verdict and dismissed the complaint, and the executor appealed.
Whether a head injury that produces an irresistible impulse to commit suicide can constitute a reasonably foreseeable, and therefore proximate, consequence of the car accident that caused the injury.