Life is complicated and gets more so when lawyers begin the analyze factual events and accidents. In our system of justice, the wrongdoer is to be held responsible if he or she caused injury. But the word cause can be sliced and diced in many ways by the courts.

In many cases, the issue of causation never really comes up as the issues and parties are simple. But in other injury situations, the question of what or who caused the injury becomes very important and tends to be the focus of the courtroom debate when you have several parties involved.

Here are some of the terms you might hear during the causation debate. You might hear terms like factual cause, proximate cause, “but for” cause and intervening cause. The factual cause is generally what we think of as a cause, did this event result in this result. Proximate cause is a little more complex mainly because it’s a legal term of art used by the courts to limit liability. The word proximate in general use is a geographical, physical frame of reference, but in the legal area, it’s used differently. Proximate cause means that the harm or injury was foreseeable because of the wrongful act. So, if the result is too remote from the wrongful act, the courts will begin to limit liability. The term “but for” cause means the claimed cause is the act without which the event would not have occurred. The courts in Kansas at one point said that the concept of proximate cause is obsolete (Reynolds v. Kansas Dept. of Transportation, 273 Kan. 261, 268-69 (2002) since the adoption of comparative negligence where the courts compare the percentages of fault of all alleged wrongdoers under K.S.A. 60-258a, where the court said that, “With the adoption of comparative fault, Kansas has moved beyond the concept of proximate cause in negligence.” 273 Kan. at 269.  We apparently have not moved very far beyond since the concept has been mentioned by the courts several times since, most recently in a 2018 case opinion Burnett v. Eubanks, 425 P. 3d 343, 351 when the court said, “Our proximate cause requirement, which encompasses both causation-in-fact and legal causation, is equivalent to the “legal cause” concept from the Restatement (Second) of Torts Sec. 431 (1965).” You might hear the term concurrent causes particularly where many factors contribute to the injury.

At first glance, you might think this is crazy. But in reality, it is important for the system to know for sure that the injury was caused by the wrongdoer so that responsibility is properly placed on the right party.  Like many things involving the law, it gets complicated which is why you may want to chat with a lawyer.