I have been reviewing a number of professions that deal with "causation" and each tend to have their own definition of cause and effect or "causation".
I have an interesting URL retrieved today 8-18-05 from the internet regarding judicial law and "causation".
I wonder how many professions I can find. Five so far....
Best,
Rob
URL: Allen Linden in Canadian Tort Law (Butterworths Legal Publishers, 1993, p. 99) explains:
"The most commonly employed technique for determining causation-in-fact is the "but for" test, sometimes called the sine qua non test. It works like this: if the accident would not have occurred but for the defendant's negligence, this conduct is a cause of the injury. Put another way, if the accident would have occurred just the same, whether or not the defendant acted, this conduct is not a cause of the loss. Thus, the act of the defendant must have made a difference."
Where more than one person has contributed negligent conduct resulting in damage or loss, or where the plaintiff is partly negligent, the situation is covered by "negligence acts" in place in most provinces. These statutes allow a court to find more than one person as having contributed, through their negligence, to an injury for which damages are being sought. For example, British Columbia's Negligence Act says that where, by the fault of two or more persons, loss is caused to one or more of them, the liability to make good the loss shall be in proportion to the degree in which each person was at fault (expressed as a percentage). If it is not possible to establish different degrees of fault, the liability is divided equally.
In order to successfully bring a legal action against another person for negligence, it is important that the plaintiff prove that the conduct of that person was the "proximate cause" of the damages or losses suffered by the plaintiff. It used to be that scientific evidence was needed to proof causation but, in Snell v. Farrell, Canada's Supreme Court greatly simplified things by saying (1) scientific evidence is not required and that (2) that causation can be inferred from the facts "in the absence of evidence to the contrary adduced by the defendant."
Another important distinction of this field of Canadian law is that it is not enough to show that the defendant's action caused the damages or losses but that, also, the negligence of the defendant was the "proximate cause" of the damage. In most cases, this will not be a difficulty as the damage or loss will ensue immediately from the negligence. But in other cases, there could be intervening factors, such as the actions of other persons (eg. a rescuer) , the pre-condition of the plaintiff to the damages or losses which were suffered, and any new injury suffered as a result of the original damage or loss, such as a person who, having suffered a broken leg, then falls down stairs as a result of the crutches.
In Canadian Tort Law, Mr. Linden reviews the inconsistent approach of the courts to conclude that there are "no easy answers to the remoteness and proximate cause issues." He suggests that the case law is so convoluted that the courts should approach these cases "without the blinders of directness or foresight." In the 1920s, the rule was that if an act was negligent and caused damage or loss, than it was immaterial whether the damage or loss was foreseeable or not; all damage or loss from the negligent act was recoverable. This was based on a shipping case where a piece of wood was dropped into the hold of a ship. The plank, by some quirk of the way it fell, produced a spark causing a fire which destroyed the entire ship (the case is called Re Polomis and Furness) . In 1961, the English common law courts reversed their earlier position and held in Overseas Tankship v. Mort's Dock and Engineering that: "a man must be considered to be responsible for the probable consequences of his act. To demand more of him is too harsh a rule." The new rule became "the foresight of the reasonable man." But in 1966, in a case called The Wagon Mound #2, the English high court changed the word "probable" to "possible" suggesting now that defendants be held liable to all the consequences of their act.
From that background, the Canadian courts have struggled to find or devise a made-in-Canada solution. In 1974, the Supreme Court offered that "it is not necessary that one foresee the precise concatenation of events. It is enough to fix liability if one can foresee in a general way the class or character of injury which occurred" (R. v. Cote).
Another recurring problem is what is called the "thin-skull" person. It is clear that negligent persons must take their victims as they find them. "It is no answer to the sufferer's claim for damages that he would have suffered less injury, or no injury at all, if he had not had an unusually thin skull or an unusually weak heart" (Dulieu v. White and Sons) even if death results.
In addition, a person remains liable for subsequent damages caused as a result of the original injury. In one case, a person was bitten by a dog owned by a negligent defendant, and then suffered paralysis as a result of a reaction to the tetanus injection. The dog owner was held responsible for the paralysis. Consequently, a person is liable for emotional or mental damages caused by their negligent action as long as the negligence is the proximate cause of the damage.
Liability will extend itself to a rescuer as well, for personal injuries or for property damage. Also, if there is any intervening negligence, this does not remove the original negligent party from liability, although, under the negligence acts, negligence might then be allocated between the negligent parties.
This could be a most interesting subject because many many teachers are teaching directly out of texts that have no causal proof what so ever. Yet, can we say there is a high correlation of truth rather than a cause and effect?