You may not be familiar with this term, but simply put causation is your being able to prove that negligence on the part of another person caused your injury, and resulted in a personal injury claim. This means being able to prove that the accident you were involved in caused your injury and nothing else. In these situations the burden of proof is on the victim to clearly demonstrate the connection between the accident and the injury they suffered.
Example
Let’s imagine you were involved in an automotive accident where your car was struck from behind. As a result you suffered typical “whiplash” injuries, which most courts are more than familiar in dealing with. If, however, you claim that additional, and unusual, injuries were suffered then the burden of proof will be on you to prove that the accident was responsible for these other injuries. You would specifically need to prove that these injuries were not pre-existing ones.
There are two types of causation you need to be aware of: Actual and Proximate.
Actual
This is often referred to as “but for” causation. In actual causation the jury will be asked to decide if the victim would still have been injured in the absence of negligence on the part of the person who caused the injury. This type of causation is usually very easy to prove because the causal link is clear e.g. the defendant was driving while under the influence and then swerved across three lanes of traffic, striking the victim’s car in the process.
The link between the driver’s negligence and the victim’s injury is clear and easily identifiable, so this type of personal injury claim should be settled quickly.
Proximate
In personal injury claims where a direct causal link is not easily identifiable, the jury will then need to determine if the negligent person could reasonably foresee that their negligence would cause an accident of some kind. These types of personal injury claims are usually brought forward by people who have created tenuous links between their injury and the defendant.
An example of proximate causation would be an electrician who repairs an electronic door entry system, which then malfunctions and “traps” a person inside a building for 10 minutes longer than they expected. That person is then involved in an automotive accident on the journey home, but their claim is that if they’d left on time they would never have had the accident in the first place.
Most proximate causation cases are dismissed because as we said, their causal link to the defendant is tenuous, at best.
As you can see causation is a complex area of the law, and a key aspect of any personal injury claim. Understanding proximate and actual causation are only part of being able to properly handle a personal injury case. So, you should always engage the services of an experience personal injury attorney if you, or a family member, has been injured due to the negligence of another person.