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Proximate cause triggers a chain of events leading to an injury. It must be related and foreseeable. Multiple parties can be liable, and intent doesn’t matter. Lawyers may use ambiguity to defend clients.
A proximate cause is an action that triggers a chain of events leading to an injury. The proximate cause may not occur at the immediate time of the injury, but it may be clearly related to the injury and it can be demonstrated that nothing occurred between the action and the injury to prevent its occurrence. When people are brought to court in cases accusing them of injury liability, the proximate lawsuit is one of the things that needs to be shown.
To be a proximate cause, an action must be clearly related to an injury and the injury must be foreseeable by the nature of the action. For example, hitting someone with a stone is an expected consequence of throwing a stone, meaning that when someone throws a stone and hits another person, the action of throwing the stone is considered a proximate cause of the injury. Similarly, if the stone bounced off a tree and hit a person, the person who threw it would also be responsible.
It is possible for more people to engage in activities that could be considered proximate causes. If both of their actions would have led to the same consequence or it is not possible to determine which one committed the act that led to the damage, both parties will be liable. For example, if two people throw cigarettes from their cars and a forest fire starts, both actions could have caused the same amount of damage and the fire cannot be traced back to one person’s actions, so both are liable in the eyes of the law.
The intent behind an action does not matter for the purpose of determining whether or not it was a proximate cause. For example, if someone dies from a gunshot wound because someone else fired a gun, it doesn’t matter whether the gun was fired through negligence, recklessness, or willful misconduct. In all three cases, the action, firing the gun, was a proximate cause of death from a gunshot wound. However, these crimes would be tried differently because one could be considered manslaughter while another is homicide.
Sometimes the proximate cause can be nebulous and a lawyer can put that to advantage. In these situations, attorneys hope that the ambiguity of a situation can be used to demonstrate that their clients should not be held liable for an injury.
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