Legal Cause
![handle is hein.journals/ylr60 and id is 771 raw text is: THE YALE LAW JOURNAL
VOLUME 60 MAY, 1951 NUmBER 5
LEGAL CAUSE
FLEMING JAMES JR. and ROGER F. PERRY*
NEGLIGENCE is not a ground of liability unless it causes injury or damage
to some interest which the law recognizes and protects. Moreover, it does
not make a defendant liable for any injury or damage that is not a conse-
quence of the negligence. The establishment of the requisite causal con-
nection is therefore an element of a plaintiff's cause of action for negligence,
to be pleaded and proven by him. And where a cause of action exists,
the question of causal connection will determine the scope of liability-the
extent of the injury or damage for which defendant will have to pay. The
question then naturally arises what is the kind of causal connection or
relationship that the law requires to be proven. Obviously the legal test
includes a requirement that the wrongful conduct must be a cause in fact
of the harm; but if this stood alone the scope of liability would be vast indeed,
for the causes of causes [are] infinite'---the fatal trespass done by Eve
was cause of all our woe. But the law has not stopped there-it has
developed further restrictions and limitations. The concept this development
has produced is generally called proximate or legal cause. To be sure
this concept is only one of the devices used to limit the fact and the extent
of liability for negligence.' In the progress of negligence law, however, the
concept of proximate cause has been greatly overworked to limit or control
both the liability of defendant and the effect of contributory negligence
because of many considerations which can be treated in a more meaningful
and significant way in connection with other issues, such as that of duty,
standard of conduct and the like.2 Having no integrated meaning of its
own, [the] chameleon quality [of proximate cause] permits it to be sub-
stituted for any one of the elements of a negligence case when decision on
that element becomes difficult.... No other formula.., so nearly does the
tLafayette S. Foster Professor of Law, Yale Law School.
*LL.B. 1951, Yale Law School.
1. Limitations on the scope of duty and the rule of contributory negligence are, for
example, other such devices.
2. See GREEN, RATIONALE OF PROXI'MATE CAUSE 78, 122 et seq. (1927); Carpenter,
Workable Rules for Determining Proximate Cause, 20 CALIF. L. Rzv. 229, 246-55 (1932) ;
and Maltbie, C. J., in Kinderavitch v. Palmer, 127 Conn. 85, 89 et seq., 15 A.2d 83, 86
(1940).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/ylr60&div=69&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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