⚖️ Make Actual Causation, Proximate Cause, and Multiple Causes Torts Click.⚖️

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🎧 EPISODE SUMMARY 🎧

Actual cause asks whether the injury would have occurred when and as it did but for the defendant's tortious conduct. The counterfactual should replace the breach with reasonable conduct while holding unrelated facts constant. The defendant's act need not be the sole cause, and proof may be direct or circumstantial.

Multiple necessary causes usually fit ordinary but-for analysis. Multiple sufficient causes require a rule that recognizes each independently sufficient force as a factual cause. Alternative causation addresses uncertainty about which negligent defendant caused the injury and may shift a burden when its strict requirements are met. These doctrines respond to different causal structures.

Proximate cause limits liability to harms arising from the risks that made the defendant's conduct tortious. The type of harm and class of persons exposed matter more than the exact manner or full severity. Intervening events do not automatically end liability. Foreseeable rescue, ordinary medical negligence, and misconduct the defendant had a duty to prevent commonly remain within the scope of risk, while extraordinary unrelated events present stronger superseding-cause arguments.

The eggshell plaintiff rule concerns extent. Once the defendant actually causes a type of injury within the scope of liability, the defendant generally takes the plaintiff as found and is responsible for the resulting severity.

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