Also known as: remote causes · remoteness of cause · remoteness · remote causation
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A cause separated from its effect by intervening events or forces so that it does not qualify as the legal or proximate cause of the resulting harm.
Rowan Russell telephoned a parts supplier to explore future orders. Months later the supplier declined to renew its existing contract with Regal Apparel. Regal Apparel sued Russell for tortious interference. The court held that Russell's initial call was a remote cause of the nonrenewal because intervening business decisions broke the chain of causation.
A passenger dropped a package of fireworks on the platform. The fireworks exploded and knocked over a set of scales that struck Rosalind Reed. Reed sued the railroad for negligence. The court concluded that the passenger's conduct was a remote cause of Reed's injuries because the explosion's effect on the scales was too attenuated to support liability.
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Static Control sold microchips that enabled refurbished toner cartridges. Lexmark sued under the Lanham Act claiming false advertising. Static Control's statements reached some customers only through multiple intermediaries. The Court held that any injury to Lexmark from those remote statements was too attenuated to satisfy proximate-cause requirements.
A coal company executive contributed millions to a judicial candidate's campaign. Years later the same company appeared before the newly elected justice in a contract dispute. The opposing party moved to disqualify the justice. The Court found the contribution's influence on the later ruling too remote to create a due-process violation.
A textile union sued an employer for breach of a collective-bargaining agreement. The employer argued that any link between the contract and federal labor policy was remote. The Court held that the agreement itself supplied the necessary federal question even if the underlying events seemed attenuated.
A state prosecutor began proceedings against a civil-rights organizer. The organizer sought a federal injunction claiming the prosecution chilled protected speech. The Court concluded that the connection between the state case and any federal constitutional harm was too remote to justify federal interference.
A remote cause lies too far back in the chain of events and is separated by intervening forces, so it cannot support liability. Proximate cause requires that the harm be a foreseeable result of the defendant's conduct without such attenuation. Courts examine the proximity of the actor's conduct to the interference or injury under Restatement factors.
No. Time is one factor, but the key inquiry is whether intervening events or decisions have broken the causal chain. A conviction twenty years old may still be excluded under evidence rules if its probative value does not substantially outweigh prejudice, yet temporal distance alone does not automatically render every earlier event a remote cause.
Recovery is limited to pecuniary losses that are the legal result of the misrepresentation or interference. Purely speculative or attenuated revenue losses that depend on third-party contracts are usually excluded because they are too remote from the defendant's conduct.
…it touches subjects on which the States have historically been the primary legislators. Neither suggestion is tenable. As for remoteness, it may or may not be wise for the National Government to deal with education, but Justice Breyer has surely demonstrated that the commercial prospects of an illiterate State or Nation are…