Proximate Cause

Question 1

Role on Prior and Remote Cause

Answer 1

A prior and remote cause cannot be made the basis of an action, if such remote cause did nothing more than furnish the condition or give rise to the occasion by which the injury was made possible, if there intervened between such prior or remote cause and injury a distinct, successive, unrelated and efficient cause, even though such injury would not have happened but for such condition or occasion.

If no danger existed in the condition except because of the independent cause, condition is not proximate cause.

*if the independent negligent act or defective condition sets into operation the circumstances, which result in the injury because of the prior defective condition, such subsequent act or condition is the proximate cause

Question 2

Definition of Proximate Cause

Answer 2

That cause which in a natural and continuous sequence, unbroken by any efficient and intervening cause produces the injury and without which the result would not have occurred.

Question 3

Proximate Legal Cause

Answer 3

That acting first, and producing the injury, either

1. Immediately
2. By setting other events in motion

All constituting a natural and continuous chain of events

Each having a close causal connection with its immediate predecessor

The final event in the chain immediately effecting the injury as a natural and probable result of the cause which first acted

Under such circumstances that the person responsible for the first event should, as an ordinarily prudent and intelligent person, have reasonable ground to expect at the moment of his act or default that an injury to some person might probably result therefrom

Question 4

Test whether new cause is proximate cause

Answer 4

> which is not a consequence of the first wrongful cause,
which is not under control of the wrongdoer,
which could not have been foreseen by the exercise of reasonable diligence,and except for which the final injurious consequence could not have happened,
§ then such injurious consequence must be deemed too remote;

Question 5

Efficient intervening cause

Abrogar v. Cosmos

Answer 5

One not produced by a wrongful act or omission, but independent of it, and adequate to bring the injurious results.

Question 6

Doctrine of Proximate Cause

Answer 6

Device for imputing liability where there is no pre-existing contractual relation between parties