Opinion ID: 1321791
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Causal Relation Issue

Text: The beginning point of all tort liability is affirmative conduct, and the first step in establishing a defendant's liability is to identify him and connect his conduct with the victim's injury. Id. at 546. The [causal relation] inquiry is limited to the fact of the defendant's contribution to the injury... Conduct is a factual concept; the victim's hurt is a factual concept; causal relation is a factual concept. Duty, negligence, and damages are legal concepts and depend upon different considerations from those involved in the determination of causal relation. Id. at 548-49. Thus the causal relation issue remains ever the same: Did the defendant's conduct contribute to the plaintiff's injury? As long as the evidence will support a reasonable inference that the defendant's conduct played a part in the victim's injury (even though other inferences can be drawn as to causation), it is for the jury, not the judge, to decide the issue of factual causation. See Sanders v. Atchison, 336 P2d 324 (N. Mex. 1959). In nearly every case contributing causes can be identified, and serious questions of duty, negligence and damages may arise. But in negligence cases all the trial court needs to know about causation is that the defendant's conduct contributed to the injury. See Hart & Honore, Causation in the Law, 103 (1959). If so, then the case should go to the jury. Presiding Judge McMurray's dissent in the Court of Appeals was eminently correct on this point: The issue of proximate cause (as well as negligence and such related issues as assumption of the risk, lack of ordinary care for one's own safety and comparative and contributory negligence) is generally a question of fact for the jury's determination and may only be decided as a matter of law in clear and palpable cases where the evidence is so clear as to lead to only one conclusion, that is, that the defendants' acts were not the proximate cause of the plaintiffs' injury. McAuley v. Wills, 164 Ga. App. 812, 818 (298 SE2d 594) (1982). The evidence was not clear and palpable in this case.