Criminology

The concept of causation originated in tort law, but it now finds extensive application in various other areas also, like criminal law and insurance law, to give two examples. In very simple terms, causation is used as a guiding factor in determining liability of a party, in the sense that, a court will penalize a party which is proved to have caused the wrong, crime etc. etc. In legal parlance, causation is also often referred to as the but-for test i.e. for a party to be legally culpable, it must be shown that the resulting legal injury would not have occurred but for the acts or omissions of that party.

The principle of causation must always be analyzed both in a factual as well as in legal light. A party who has factually caused another party to suffer some injury may sometimes not be legally culpable, and conversely, a person, who apparently has done nothing to cause some damage imputed to him, may nevertheless be legally culpable. Cases belonging to the latter category, where the law affixes liability without looking into the perpetrator of the actus (leading to the wrong) may be classified into the categories strict liability, thin skull, absolute liability etc. However, in the vast majority of cases, liability is imputed on the party which has actually caused the wrong to occur, through his acts or omissions. On the face of it, this seems to be a simple enough rule, but problems arise when a legal wrong is the result of not one, but many factors. For instance, if a person is hit by a speeding vehicle, because he was being chased by a horse, which in turn had been frightened by children pelting stones at it, it is difficult to state who or what was responsible for the injury to the person. To find a way to resolve this problem and to apportion liability, courts consider two important aspects of any causal link  proximity and foreseeability. Under the proximity rule, a chain of causation is established if it is shown that the alleged tortfeasor had been responsible for the most recent element that culminated in the injury. For example, if a person is stabbed and left in the middle of the road at night and is subsequently run over by a vehicle, under this rule, the vehicle-driver would be liable even though it was another person who had stabbed the victim in the first place. However, where courts have considered the foreseeability test, liability is affixed depending on whether it was reasonably foreseeable that injury would be caused, even though it may not have been the most proximate element.

In other words, this rule states that a person can be held liable only to the extent of reasonably foreseeable consequences of his act or omission. Thus if one were to take the earlier example, under the foresseability rule, it would be the original stabber of the victim who would be held liable for the latters injury, because it could be reasonably foreseen that if a person is left wounded in the middle of the road at night, he could be hit by a car. To escape liability under the foreseeabilty rule, therefore the defendant must show that the resultant injury had been caused by a new act or omission (committed by a third party, nature etc. etc.) after his actus. This is referred to as the novus actus interveniens rule, wherein a person may be relieved of liability if it can be shown that the final legal injury was the result of an yet another intervening act.

The principle of causation has evolved a lot and the above discussion is just a brief description of the critical points that come into the picture when the question of liability is raised. While both the proximate cause theory and the foreseeability theory continue to be significant, courts these days generally base their decision on the latter principle. However, there are just about as many exceptions to these rules as the rules themselves  making the principle of causation one of the most convoluted doctrines in modern law.