Understanding Causation...

Causation is one of the keys to any personal injury claim. The following will look at just what it means and how more than one person can be at fault.

As a basic concept it's something you're probably already familiar with. The word 'causation' is one of those pieces of legal jargon that doesn’t differ much from everyday language.

Causation is likely to be argued after the duty of care has been identified and the breach of duty has been confirmed.

In other words, once it's been shown that someone has broken their legal obligation to act carefully and within the rules there is still more to be discussed. The person who is in breach of duty will investigate causation to demonstrate that they are not solely at fault.

What exactly is causation? It’s just a fancier way of saying ‘the cause.’ As pointed out in the explanation of liability, there isn’t always one lone cause of an accident. This fact will play very heavily on later negotiations.

In one of the examples given earlier someone slipped while walking on an icy sidewalk. The initial cause will be pointed out by the victim and, in turn, they place the liability on the store owner. This is an easy and obvious thing to do because there are clear bi-laws in most every area stating that the business owner must maintain their entranceways.

Once confronted with that information, the business owner and their insurance company will look deeper into causation. In most cases this is not a move to get them totally off the hook. Arguments of this kind are almost never made with the intent of getting rid of the claim completely. The point they want to make is that while the business owner was at fault, the victim was also somewhat negligent.

Photos of the accident might show that the claimant wasn’t wearing proper footwear for the winter. While everyone should have the right to be protected from dangerous walkways, they should also do their part to protect themselves.

If the injured person was wearing high heels after a freezing rain storm on a clearly weathered sidewalk it might be said that they were also negligent. Closer investigation might find witnesses who saw the person running before they fell. Again, running in such weather conditions, especially with improper footwear, can easily be deemed careless. Both of these things go towards proving causation.

So even when there is a clear case of fault there is still a chance that more underlying causes can be found. These debates about causation will, in the end, determine how much each person was careless (or negligent) in the accident.

As we'll show later on in the negotiation stage, this causation will be broken down into an exact percentage to help determine just how much money the claimant is entitled to.

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