One question could prove of importance in any personal injury case. This is that question: Was the action taken by the defendant a proximal cause for the injury sustained by the plaintiff? An intervening or superseding cause could not be a proximal cause.
What might disrupt the causal chain?
• An action made by a 3rd party
• An act of nature
Features associated with superseding causes
Evidence that a superseding cause had been responsible for the plaintiff’s injury would release the defendant from responsibility for that same injury. In a personal injury case, an act performed by a 3rd party might be identified as a superseding cause. Any negligence committed by a 3rd party eliminates any reason for determining whether or not the defendant was negligent.
Features associated with intervening causes
The intervening cause must have occurred after demonstration of the defendant’s negligence and could be introduced by a 3rd party or by an act of nature.Usually, in cases that have such a disruption of the causal chain, the defendant is partly to blame for the plaintiff’s injury. Still, there is an exception to that typical situation.
There is a possible connection between foresee ability and intervening causes. If any one of them should have been foreseeable, then that same disruption of the causal chain would get viewed as something that belonged on the list of superseding causes.
What determines whether or not an intervention and causal disruption should have been foreseeable?
If a defense lawyer hoped to show that his or her client should not be charged with negligence, then that same Personal Injury Lawyers in St. Albert might try to prove the existence of an intervening event, such as an act of nature. If the same lawyer could prove that the intervening event should have been foreseeable, then it would belong among a certain group of cases.
To be exact, it would belong with those causes that manage to eliminate any reason for determining whether or not the defendant was negligent (superseding causes). Obviously, a defense attorney would delight in the ability to eliminate any suspicion, regarding the client’s possible negligence.
Hence, defense lawyers welcome the chance to present that argument. In that way, a lawyer’s argument serves as the means for suggesting how the court and jury want to interpret the concept of a foreseeable event. A very skilled attorney might be able to convince a jury that an act of nature could qualify as a foreseeable event.
How could that be possible? Changes from the predicted weather surprise even the person that forecasts the weather. Still, if, according to predictions, something is bound to happen in the future, an attorney might argue that it should be viewed as a foreseeable event.