Chicago Personal Injury Lawyer

Proving Proximate Cause

To successfully prove that someone is responsible for an injury, you must be able to prove “causation”. There are two types of causation: cause-in-fact, and proximate cause. Cause-in-fact is when something is directly responsible for an injury occurring. This often determined by something referred to as the “but-for” test, as in, “But for X, Y would not have occurred.” For example, “But for the bright, sunny day, John would not have received a sunburn.”

This example shows a clear problem with cause-in-fact causation; numerous factors may be responsible for an injury occurring, but not all of them may be incidental to the injury. For a factor to be a proximate cause, also known as the legal cause, it must be an action (or a failure to take action) that is reasonably likely to produce the injury in question.

To continue the previous example, “But for the poorly manufactured sunscreen that John applied, he would not have received a sunburn.” In this case, manufacturing sunscreen that is ineffective at blocking the sun’s rays is reasonably likely to cause injury; people will be relying on that sunscreen to prevent them from a sunburn and would act differently than if they had no sunscreen at all. Thus, if a company was responsible for manufacturing such sunscreen, they would be the proximate cause of your injury if you received a sunburn.

However, it is important to properly assign the proximate cause when pursuing a lawsuit; if the defendant can prove that they were not actually responsible, then you no longer have a valid claim. If, for example, the sunscreen was not actually faulty, and simply degraded because of poor storage conditions at the retail store, the sunscreen manufacturer is not the proximate cause of John’s sunburn.

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The Chicago personal injury lawyer of Friedman & Bonebrake, P.C. understand how to build a strong civil case. Contact 312-466-8200 for more information.