write me a case brief. based on this case

Dan Howard and Sherolyn Howard are the owners of property in Lowmansville, Kentucky. At the time of the fire, the property was leased by Bob and Diane Castle who operated a grocery store on the property known as Family Food.

In the late evening of December 26, 2015, after the store closed, Leslie Matthew Spradlin parked his truck in the store parking lot. He left with a friend leaving a firearm, two ammo clips and a tool box in the truck.

Sometime during the night, Spradlin's truck caught fire. The actual cause of the fire has not been determined, although to be clear, there is no suggestion that Spradlin set the fire to either the truck or the store building. The Howards' claim is that a third-party broke into Spradlin's truck, stole the firearms, ammo clips and tool box and then burned the truck to cover the crime. The eaves of the grocery store caught fire and the building was entirely destroyed.

The Howards sued Spradlin for negligence based on the above recited undisputed facts. Spradlin made a motion for summary judgment, which the court granted. Howard appealed to this court.

Regardless of how the Howards creatively attempt to frame their claim, it is a common-law negligence claim. Any negligence claim has four elements: "(1) a legally-cognizable duty, (2) a breach of that duty, (3) causation . . . and (4) damages." Patton v. Bickford, 529 S.W.3d 717, 729 (Ky. 2016).

Causation as an element of any negligence action consists of two components, actual causation and proximate cause.

The second component, proximate causation, "captures the notion that, although conduct in breach of an established duty may be an actual but-for cause of the plaintiff's damages, it is nevertheless [not] reasonable impose liability upon the defendant because the damages were not foreseeable from the breach of duty." Id. at 731.

The Howards' argument is that Spradlin should have foreseen a crime upon a crime and taken reasonable care to prevent what was a possible but an improbable occurrence. The Howards' argument is counterintuitive to the second element of negligence, proximate causation.

It is not foreseeable that a store would catch on fire because a truck was unlocked. It may be that a criminal would damage a truck after an attempted break-in, but a nearby building is not usually harmed, let alone burned to the ground.

In Britton v. Wooten, a fire started when trash was piled next to a grocery store by a tenant's employees and the trash was ignited by a third-party causing the building to catch fire. The Court held that the fire was a reasonably foreseeable result of piling flammable material next to a building. Id. at 452.

Any similarity between Britton and this case ends with the fact that a grocery store caught fire. A parked truck with the ignition turned off is not a fire hazard as was the trash in Britton. Spradlin parked his truck in a parking lot where the undisputed evidence is that he had the possessor's permission to park.

. . . .

The Howards cannot prevail as a matter of law. Even if we assume Spradlin breached any duty owed to the Howards, the intervening and superseding intentional or criminal acts of the unknown third-party broke whatever weak chain of causation the Howards could establish. A failure to lock a truck is clearly not the proximate cause of the fire as it was not a result that would be foreseeable to a reasonable person.

For the reasons stated, the summary judgment of the Lawrence Circuit Court is affirmed.

ALL CONCUR.