Causation Flashcards
CAUSATION
Causation = actual cause + proximate cause
The link between the voluntary act (or omission) and the social harm (together, the actus reus).
Implicit component of all crimes, but only plays a practical role in result crimes.
ACTUAL CAUSE
“BUT FOR” the defendant’s voluntary act(s) (or omissions()), would the social harm occurred when it did?
SUBSTANTIAL FACTOR TEST
The defendant’s conduct is the cause-in-fact of the prohibited result if the conduct was a “substantial factor” in bringing about said result (each defendant’s conduct must have been done concurrently and could independently be sufficient for the resulting harm).
PROXIMATE CAUSES
An act from which an injury results as a natural, direct, uninterrupted consequence and without which the injury would not have occurred.
The subset of actual causes of a social harm that we are willing to hold criminally responsible for the harm, based on fairness, justice, and policy considerations
SUPERSEDING INTERVENING CAUSE
When an intervening cause relieves the defendant, who is an actual cause of the social harm, of criminal responsibility for the social harm (based on fairness etc.).
PROXIMATE CAUSATION FACTORS (C/L)
Factors for evaluating whether an intervening cause is also a superseding cause that breaks the causal chain:
Foreseeability of the intervening cause
Apparent safety Doctrine
Voluntary, Deliberate, Informed Human Intervention
Intervening Cause Only De Minimis Contribution to Social Harm
Intended Commission (Intended Consequences Doctrine)
APPARENT SAFETY DOCTRINE
A defendant’s unlawful act that puts a victim in danger may be found to be the proximate cause of resulting harm, unless the victim has a route to safety but instead puts herself in further harm, which causes the injury of death.
DE MINIMIS CONTRIBUTION
The law will generally not treat a very minor but-for cause as a proximate cause when responsibility can be attached to a far more substantial cause.
INTENDED CONSEQUENCES DOCTRINE
Applies if the consequence intended and the which actually happened belong to the same genus even in they represent different species.
In other words, if an intentional wrongdoer gets what they wanted in the general manner they wanted it, they should not, all else being equal, escape criminal responsibility even if an unforeseeable event intervened.
OMISSIONS
An omission can never be a superseding cause. No matter how unforeseeable an omission may be, a “negative act” (an omission) will not supersede an earlier “positive act.”
VOLUNTARY, DELIBERATE & INFORMED HUMAN INTERVENTION
The free, deliberate, and informed intervention of a second person, who intends to exploit the situation created by the first, but is not acting in concert with him, is normally held to relieve the first actor of criminal responsibility.
FORESEEABILITY
The standard by which to gauge whether an intervening cause supersedes, and thus severs the causal link.
The linchpin in the superseding cause analysis, therefore, is whether the intervening cause was foreseeable based on an objective standard of reasonableness (GROSS negligence and intentional misconduct is NOT reasonably foreseeable (Rideout)).
