Controversy
The doctrine of proximate cause is notoriously confusing. The doctrine is phrased in the language of causation, but in most of the cases in which proximate cause is actively litigated, there is not much real dispute that the defendant but-for caused the plaintiff's injury. The doctrine is actually used by judges in an admittedly arbitrary fashion limit the scope of the defendant's liability to a subset of the total class of potential plaintiffs who suffered some harm from the defendant's actions. For an understanding of the broader view of causation which proximate cause circumscribes, see Butterfly effect.
For example, in the two famous Kinsman Transit cases from the 2nd Circuit (exercising admiralty jurisdiction over a New York incident), it was clear that mooring a boat improperly could lead to the risk of a boat drifting away and crashing into another boat, and that both boats could crash into a bridge, which collapsed and blocked the river, and in turn, the wreckage could flood the land adjacent to the river, as well as prevent any traffic from traversing the river until it had been cleared. But under proximate cause, the property owners adjacent to the river could sue (Kinsman I), but not the owners of the boats or the cargoes which could not move until the river was reopened (Kinsman II).
Therefore, in 2001, the American Law Institute proposed in a draft of the Restatement (Third), Torts: Liability for Physical Harm (Basic Principles) that proximate cause should be replaced with scope of liability.
Read more about this topic: Proximate Cause
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but Im not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (15791688)