Also known as: natural & probable · natural and probable consequences · foreseeability · proximate cause
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A consequence that follows in the ordinary course from particular conduct.
Nancy Nelson buys a defective appliance from Neptune Energy in State X. The appliance reaches State Y when a consumer carries it there. Neptune Energy faces no personal jurisdiction in State Y because the travel alone does not show purposeful availment of that market.
Nigel Nelson's minor son takes the family car without permission and causes an accident. Nigel faces no vicarious liability because the parent-child relationship alone does not make the son's conduct a natural and probable result of any parental act.
Nora Nash challenges a handgun ban after keeping a pistol for self-defense at home. The restriction is measured against historical understandings of the right to keep and bear arms rather than modern policy views on probable outcomes.
The District of Columbia generally prohibits the possession of handguns. It is a crime to carry an unregistered firearm, and the registration of handguns is prohibited. Wholly apart from that prohibition, no person may carry a handgun without a license, but the chief of police may issue licenses for one-year periods. District of Columbia law also requires residents to keep their lawfully owned firearms unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device unless they are located in a place of business or are being used for lawful recreational activities. Respondent Dick Heller is a D.C. special police officer authorized to carry a handgun while on duty at the Federal Judicial Center. He applied for a registration certificate for a handgun that he wished to keep at home, but the District refused. He thereafter filed a lawsuit in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia seeking, on Second Amendment grounds, to enjoin the city from enforcing the bar on the registration of handguns, the licensing requirement insofar as it prohibits the carrying of a firearm in the home without a license, and the trigger-lock requirement insofar as it prohibits the use of functional firearms within the home. The District Court dismissed respondent's complaint. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed, construing his complaint as seeking the right to render a firearm operable and carry it about his home in that condition only when necessary for self-defense. The Court of Appeals directed the District Court to enter summary judgment for respondent. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
View caseNicole Navarro is tried for an alleged assault. The court permits the jury to infer that acts of a person of sound mind are the product of will and produce their natural and probable consequences without shifting any burden to the defense.
Tavaris Smith was indicted for the malice murder of his wife on August 26, 2003. The crime occurred on June 5, 2003. A jury found Smith guilty of malice murder on August 15, 2005. The evidence showed that Smith and his wife had marital difficulties. Smith had threatened to kill her. Smith had put a gun to her head on a previous occasion. Ms. Smith was thinking of divorcing Smith. Before trial, Smith indicated his intent to present evidence, including expert testimony. He had a physiological sleep disorder that caused him, while asleep or in a state of confusional arousal due to the disorder, to shoot his wife without any intent to do so and without any awareness that he was doing so. Smith did not file notice of an intent to assert an insanity defense under OCGA § 17-7-130.1. The trial court concluded that Smith was asserting a claim of not guilty by reason of insanity. The court appointed an expert under OCGA § 17-7-130.1 to examine him over Smith's objection. At trial, when the court-appointed expert witness was called to testify, the court instructed the jury that it had classified Smith's defense as an insanity defense. At the end of the trial, the court charged the jury on the defense of not guilty by reason of insanity. The court specifically charged the jury that Smith had the burden to prove insanity by a preponderance of the evidence. Smith again objected to the imposition of the insanity defense. Smith's own expert testified that he did not meet the legal definition of insanity. He may have committed the crime in question during a period of unconsciousness due to sleep disorders from which he was suffering. The court-appointed expert also testified that Smith did not suffer from any psychiatric problems. He may have possibly suffered from narcolepsy and confusional arousal. After the guilty verdict, Smith moved for a new trial on August 29, 2005. The trial court denied the motion for new trial on July 16, 2007. Smith filed a notice of appeal on August 15, 2007. The appeal was docketed in the Supreme Court of Georgia on October 16, 2007. The Supreme Court of Georgia heard oral argument on February 11, 2008.
View caseNathaniel Newman is convicted after the jury receives an instruction that a person is presumed to intend the natural and probable consequences of his acts. The instruction is examined to determine whether it creates an unconstitutional mandatory presumption on the element of intent.
Raymond Lee Franklin, then 21 years old and imprisoned for offenses unrelated to this case, sought to escape custody on January 17, 1979, while he and three other prisoners were receiving dental care at a local dentist's office. The four prisoners were secured by handcuffs to the same 8-foot length of chain as they sat in the dentist's waiting room. As another prisoner was being released, Franklin, who had not been reshackled, seized a pistol from one of the two officers and managed to escape. He forced the dentist's assistant to accompany him as a hostage. Franklin found the dentist's automobile but was unable to unlock the door. He fled with the dental assistant across an open clearing, demanded a car from a local resident without harming him, and then came to the home of Collie, a retired 72-year-old carpenter. Franklin pounded on the door while pointing the pistol at it. As Franklin demanded the car keys, Collie slammed the door and the gun fired, sending a bullet through the door into Collie's chest and killing him. Seconds later the gun fired again, with the second bullet traveling upward through the door into the ceiling. Franklin later made a formal statement admitting he had shot the victim but claiming the shots were fired accidentally in response to the slamming of the door. Franklin was tried in the Superior Court of Bibb County, Georgia, on charges of malice murder and kidnapping. His sole defense to the malice murder charge was a lack of the requisite intent to kill, supported by circumstantial evidence including the circumstances of the firing, the trajectory of the second bullet, his immediate confession, and his treatment of other persons encountered during the escape. The trial judge instructed the jury with language that included the statements that the acts of a person of sound mind and discretion are presumed to be the product of the person's will but the presumption may be rebutted, and that a person of sound mind and discretion is presumed to intend the natural and probable consequences of his acts but the presumption may be rebutted. Approximately one hour after receiving the charge, the jury requested reinstruction on the element of intent and the definition of accident, then deliberated ten more minutes before returning a verdict of guilty. Franklin was sentenced to death the next day. Franklin appealed unsuccessfully to the Georgia Supreme Court, which affirmed the conviction and sentence. He then sought state postconviction relief, which was denied. Having exhausted state remedies, Franklin filed a federal habeas corpus petition pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia on May 14, 1982. That court denied the application without an evidentiary hearing. Franklin appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which reversed the district court and ordered that the writ issue. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
View caseNia Nkosi receives nonpublic information and trades on it. The court considers whether the trading and resulting market effects are the natural and probable consequence of the breach of duty in evaluating liability under the misappropriation theory.
In March 1981, R. Foster Winans began working as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and one of the writers of the "Heard on the Street" column. From December 1981 through May 1983, David Carpenter worked as a news clerk at the Journal. Kenneth P. Felis was a stockbroker at Kidder Peabody who had been brought to the firm by Peter Brant, another Kidder Peabody broker and Felis' longtime friend. Since February 1981, Dow Jones distributed to all new employees "The Insider Story," a forty-page manual with seven pages devoted to the company's conflicts of interest policy. The district court found that both Winans and Carpenter knew company policy deemed all news material gleaned by an employee during the course of employment to be company property and required employees to treat nonpublic information learned on the job as confidential. Winans participated in a scheme with Brant, Felis, and Carpenter in which Winans provided the two stockbrokers with securities-related information scheduled to appear in "Heard" columns. Based on this advance information the brokers would buy or sell the subject securities. Carpenter, who was involved in a private personal relationship with Winans, served primarily as a messenger between the conspirators. Trading accounts were established in the names of Felis, Carpenter, Winans, Brant, David Clark, Western Hemisphere, and Stephen Spratt. During 1983 and early 1984, defendants made pre-publication trades on the basis of their advance knowledge of approximately twenty-seven Wall Street Journal "Heard" columns, generating net profits approaching $690,000. In November 1983, when Kidder Peabody's Compliance Department noticed a correlation between "Heard" articles and trading in the Felis and Clark accounts, Felis denied any impropriety. Felis and Brant moved funds among accounts to conceal the scheme, and Felis advised Stephen Spratt to change account names. When the SEC began inquiring, Clark and Brant made misstatements to agency officials, and Carpenter produced false invoices. On March 29, 1984, Winans and Carpenter voluntarily testified fully to the SEC. After a twenty-day non-jury trial in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York before Judge Charles E. Stewart, Jr., Winans and Felis were convicted of securities fraud, mail and wire fraud, and conspiracy, while Carpenter was convicted of aiding and abetting. The defendants appealed to the Second Circuit.
View caseA defendant is responsible for all results that occur as a natural and probable consequence of his conduct even if the precise manner was not anticipated. The chain is broken only by a superseding factor.
An instruction stating that a person of sound mind is presumed to intend the natural and probable consequences of his acts creates an unconstitutional mandatory presumption if a reasonable juror could understand it as shifting the burden to disprove intent.
Supporting sources
The phrase appears most often in criminal causation and intent instructions but the underlying idea of ordinary consequences also surfaces in civil contexts such as tort proximate cause analysis.
…to interpret the will of the legislator, is by exploring his intentions at the time when the law was made, by signs the most natural and probable,” Blackstone explained that “[i]f words happen to be still dubious, we may establish their meaning from the context; with which it may be of singular use to compare a word, or a sentence,…