When a person suffers an injury due to someone else acting in negligence, the injured party will most likely be able to recover both economic and non-economic damages after the injury. It’s important that you as the plaintiff is able to provide enough proof that shoes the defendant is in violation of an action that caused an injury. As the plaintiff, you will also need to prove that they are breaching their duty of responsibility and caused the damages to you and everything around you.
Cause of fact is also known in the courts as actual cause and its very much straightforward. For example, if a bus traveling down the road hits a car at some point, the bus driver is at fault because they failed to maintain control of the bus. This is actual cause.
Proximate cause means that there is a legal cause that the law will recognize the person that caused the accident as the major cause of the injury that occurred. The proximate action is the action that led to the consequences that was foreseeable without intervention from another person. Thus, Personal Injury Lawyer in Halifax knows that this means that the plaintiff would need to show proof that the injuries that they received couldn’t have occurred if the accident had not occurred.
Regulations to provide proof
The “But For” rule is not in effect in every state but it simply means that the plaintiff would need to provide proof as to whether or not the injury would have happened if the defendants action, which was negligent, would have occurred without their actions.
A good example of this would be if a driver who was driving drunk was going in and out through the traffic, and while weaving one time, they struck a pedestrian, which would cause a massive hemorrhage of the brain and brain damage. These injuries would not have occurred if the drunk driver was not weaving in and out of traffic.
If the drunk driver hits a factor and it explodes due to the contents inside, and this explosion causes the driver to hit the pedestrian, then the driver who is driving under the influence is most likely not going to be the prime reason of the pedestrian’s injuries.
Substantial Factor
Some states use this test to determine the proximate cause. This rule means that the court needs to consider the defendants actions and determine, if they were the main cause of an injury, or what part of the injury was caused by that driver. A substantial factor is a factor that contributes to the occurrence of a particular injury in a material way.
An example of this is if a driver was distracted at a moment that a truck carrying explosives is stopped in front of him and he didn’t see it until it was too late. Upon impact the explosives ignite and kill the driver of the truck. The driver of the vehicle that hit the truck is considered a substantial factor in the accident.
