Also known as: proximate cause · proximate causes · proximately caused · proximately causing · legal cause
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A doctrine requiring that the defendant's tortious conduct bear a sufficiently close causal relationship to the plaintiff's harm for the law to impose liability. The doctrine treats the causal sequence as one for which the law holds the actor responsible unless a defense applies.
Parker Phillips left a ladder unsecured on his roof after promised repairs. The ladder toppled onto Phoebe Park while she walked below. The unsecured condition directly produced the impact and resulting injury. Liability attaches because the conduct meets the required causal link to the harm.
Pavel Petrov fled a traffic stop for a minor unlicensed driving violation. During the chase he struck and killed a pedestrian. The death occurred in the course of the unlawful act. The misdemeanor-manslaughter rule treats the killing as involuntary manslaughter.
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Phuong Pham allowed her minor child to drive an unregistered vehicle despite known mechanical defects. The child struck Preston Pratt's car. The parent's own negligent entrustment supplied the required causal connection to the collision. Liability follows from that direct link rather than the parent-child relationship alone.
Prime Logistics installed a faulty brake part on a delivery van. The part failed during a routine stop and caused a chain-reaction crash injuring Piper Patel. The installation sequence produced the precise harm that occurred. The law treats the conduct as the legal cause of the injuries.
Prosperity Investments left a loading dock gate open after closing. An intruder entered and caused damage traced directly to the open gate. The company's failure to secure the premises constituted the conduct under review. The resulting harm satisfies the legal-cause requirement.
Phoebe Park drove with worn brakes on a steep grade. A sudden rockslide blocked the road and her vehicle struck another car. The brake defect combined with the slide to produce the impact. The conduct qualifies as a legal cause of the harm under the governing test.
Cause in fact asks whether the harm would have occurred but for the defendant's conduct. Proximate causation adds a legal filter that limits liability to harms sufficiently connected to the conduct so that the law will impose responsibility.
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No. An intervening act breaks the chain only when it is so extraordinary that it prevents the defendant's antecedent negligence from remaining a legal cause. When the intervening act is a normal incident of the risk created by the original conduct, liability continues.
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Grossly negligent medical treatment severs causation when it is so remote or accidental that it is no longer a natural and probable result of the defendant's original act. The treatment then functions as an independent intervening cause.
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Foreseeability supplies the moral and policy judgment that determines whether the actual manner of harm is one for which the law will hold the actor responsible. The test looks to what human experience indicates can happen rather than the actor's subjective expectations.
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…corporation, in the federal court for the southern district of that State. The issues were whether negligence of defendant was a proximate cause of his injuries and whether negligence of plaintiff contributed. He claimed that, by hauling the car with the open door, defendant violated a duty to him. The defendant insisted that it…