Opinion ID: 894934
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Producing Cause

Text: Ford separately complains that the trial court improperly instructed the jury on producing cause. The trial court, following PJC 70.1, instructed the jury: `Producing cause' means an efficient, exciting, or contributing cause that, in a natural sequence, produces the incident in question. There may be more than one producing cause. Ford contends that this definition is an incorrect statement of Tex as law, and that a valid definition would state that producing cause means that cause which, in a natural sequence, was a substantial factor in bringing about an event, and without which the event would not have occurred. There may be more than one producing cause. Ford requested the trial court to use this definition. We agree with Ledesma that the second part of the court's definition, recognizing that there may be more than one producing cause of an event, is correct. And we have seemed to sanction the first part, employing it ourselves several times in describing producing cause. [46] But we have also described a producing cause as one that is a substantial factor that brings about injury and without which the injury would not have occurred, [47] the definition Ford asks us to adopt. To say that a producing cause is an efficient, exciting, or contributing cause that, in a natural sequence, produces the incident in question is incomplete and, more importantly, provides little concrete guidance to the jury. Juries must ponder the meaning of efficient and exciting in this context. These adjectives are foreign to modern English language as a means to describe a cause, and offer little practical help to a jury striving to make the often difficult causation determination in a products case. Defining producing cause as being a substantial factor in bringing about an injury, and without which the injury would not have occurred, is easily understood and conveys the essential components of producing cause that (1) the cause must be a substantial cause of the event in issue and (2) it must be a but-for cause, namely one without which the event would not have occurred. This is the definition that should be given in the jury charge.