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Superceding cause

September 17, 2009 @ 03:19 PM — by sanelson11
Tagged with: trucking-accident

A "superceding cause"can be defined as an act by a third person or other force which, by its intervention, prevents an actor from being held liable for harm or injury to another, even though the actor’s antecedent negligence is a substantial factor in causing the harm.

To determine whether an intervening force is a superceding cause of harm or injury to another, and therefore, the proximate cause of the injury, courts consider the following factors:

 

 

(1) the fact that its intervention brings about harm or injury which is different from that which would have otherwise resulted from the actor’s negligence;

(2) the fact that the intervening force’s operation or the consequences thereof appear after the fact to be extraordinary, rather than ordinary or usual, in view of the circumstances existing at the time of its operation;

(3) the fact that the intervening force’s operation is due to a third person’s act (or failure to act);

(4) the fact that the intervening force operates independently of the situation which was created by the actor’s negligence, or, conversely, is or is not a normal result of such situation;

(5) the degree or amount of culpability of a third person’s wrongful act which actually sets the wrongful act into motion; and

(6) the fact that the intervening force is due to a third person’s act which is wrongful toward the other and, therefore, subjects the third person to liability to the actor.

 

 

This situation may occur in trucking accident or car accident cases. In one case, the Beaumont Court of ruled that a borrower’s act of loaning a borrowed car to a driver in exchange for crack cocaine was a superceding cause of injury, where the owner did not know that the borrower had a propensity to loan out the car and the borrower had returned the car safely the week before.

Contact Corpus Christi personal injury lawyer Scott Nelson if you have been injured in by another’s negligence and need assistance.  We also represent clients in Houston, Galveston, Brownsville, Laredo, and throughout all of Texas.

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