Definition of Proximate Cause. Kilpatrick v. Bryant, [868 S.W.2d 594, 598 (Tenn. 1993)]. The proximate cause of an injury is the act or omission of an act without which the harm would not have occurred. Put another way, proximate cause refers to an act that causes an injury as a natural and uninterrupted consequence, without which damage, injury, or destruction would not have occurred. negligentia) is a failure to exercise appropriate and/or ethical ruled care expected to be exercised amongst specified circumstances. The defendant must also be the legal or proximate cause of the harm. While For example, if a texting driver strikes a motorcyclist, the driver’s actions caused the accident. n. a happening which results in an event, particularly injury due to negligence or an intentional wrongful act. Remuneratory- the cause is the service or benefit for which the remuneration is given. A defendant in a negligence case is only responsible for those harms that the defendant could have foreseen through his or her actions. Proximate cause is also known as a legal cause. The revised Model Jury Charges reflect the courts definition of the vague notion. ... is said in many ways. Proximate cause, however, has to be determined by law as the primary cause of injury. Published under license with Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. This is a concept in the law of torts and involves the question of whether a defendant's conduct is so significant as to make him or her liable for a resulting injury. Definition of proximate cause. A person generally is liable only if an injury was proximately caused by his or her action or by his or her failure to act when he or she had a duty to act.. It is hard to disagree. 7. A. Proximate Cause: The last negligent act which contributes to an injury. Sec. A proximate cause is any event that is sufficiently related to an injury that the courts deem it the type of injury that is reasonably foreseeable from the harmful conduct. There are two varieties of causation within the law: cause-in-fact, and proximate (or legal) cause. A failure to behave with the level of care that someone of ordinary prudence would have exercised under the same circumstances. Synonyms for Proximate cause in Free Thesaurus. doctrine of proximate cause has to be applied for the purpose of ascertaining which of the successive causes is the cause to which the loss is to be attributed within the intention of the policy.1 Doctrine of Proximate Cause Proximate cause refers to an action that leads to an unbroken chain of events; events that end with someone suffering a loss. It may not be the first event that set in motion a sequence of events that led to an injury, and it may not be the very last event before the injury occurs. It is also hard to understand what it means and hence hard to apply it. Source: Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law ©1996. That which causes a negative event, such as an injury. proximate cause. Term: Kibbe Definition: Proximate Cause: (1)D left robbery victim to freeze on side of road, no clothes, no glasses; V was hit by truck. Chapter 6 ACTUAL AND PROXIMATE CAUSE Once the plaintiff has shown that the defendant behaved negligently, he must then show that this behavior “caused” the injury complained of. The efficient proximate cause rule is included in California statutes and an insurer cannot circumvent the law with an Anti-concurrent Cause (ACC) provision. Battery is the harmful or offensive touching of another person. For example, for a claim of negligence, the elements are: the (existence of a) duty, breach (of that duty), proximate cause (by that breach), and damages. Proximate cause requires that the defendant’s conduct [was] a substantial factor in bringing about the plaintiff’s injuries and that there was an unbroken sequence of events that tied [the plaintiff’s] injuries to the [defendant’s conduct] . Haynes v. Harwood. Leonard Birdsong August 1, 2008. Nevertheless, proximate cause is an important legal concept that in certain situations can provide an effective affirmative defense in malpractice lawsuits . (Beckwith v. Dahl (2012) 205 Cal.App.4th 1039.) Unforeseeable Cause Reliance on the misrepresentation must cause plaintiff damage; misrepresentations without damage do not support a cause of action for deceit. The FindLaw Legal Dictionary -- free access to over 8260 definitions of legal terms. 1590-1600 Latin proximatus (near, or approach) What is Proximate Cause. Proximate cause produces a consequences that is foreseeable, or even expected. 955 (1906) the following definition of proximate cause was given, ostensibly in an effort to incorporate every possible element in one statement: "The proxi-mate legal cause is that acting first and producing the injury, either immedi-ately or by setting other events in motion, all constituting a natural and con- proximate cause n. a happening which results in an event, particularly injury due to negligence or an intentional wrongful act. Former conviction or acquittal; double jeopardy. Gratuitous- cause is the pure liberality of the benefactor; Cause is the essential or more proximate purpose which the contracting parties have in view at the time of entering into a contract. mon law, and whether proximate cause is theoretically stable. A was held liable to B. proximate cause: a cause that sets in motion a sequence of events uninterrupted by any superseding causes and that results in a usually foreseeable effect (as an injury) which would not otherwise have occurred called also direct cause legal cause see also Palsgraf v. . Definition. Define cause. (1) The cause having the most significant impact in bringing about the loss under a first-party property insurance policy, when two or more independent perils operate at the same time (i.e., concurrently) to produce a loss. A proximate cause is an event related to an injury that the courts feel to be the cause of said injury. The element of “proximate cause” also goes by the term “legal cause.” It is the linchpin of every negligence lawsuit because it links the defendant’s wrongful act to the plaintiff’s injuries. This point is illustrated by reviewing three other cases in which proximate cause—or the absence of it—directly impacted the outcome of radiologic malpractice litigation. The area of tort law known as negligence involves harm caused by failing to act as a form of carelessness possibly with extenuating circumstances. In law, a proximate cause is an occurrence sufficiently associated with the injury that the courts consider the event to be the reason behind that injury. Antonyms for Proximate cause. In criminal law, it is defined as the actus reus (an action) from which the specific injury or other effect arose and is combined with mens rea (a state of mind) to comprise the elements of guilt. Definition. For example, in failure-to-diagnose cases, many state statutes require a probability threshold before legal proximate cause is established. 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