Mixing Oil and Water: Reconciling the Substantial Factor and Result-within-the-Risk Approaches to Proximate Cause

Most recently, however, the courts—the entities mandated to apply proximate cause during the course of the analysis of liability for negligence—appear to have brokered a peace between the dueling conceptualizations of proximate cause. As applied, the proximate cause analysis grounded in substantial factor appears to be yielding the same results with respect to liability as the proximate cause analysis grounded in foreseeability. It is the thesis of this Article that such a peace has, in fact, been brokered; whether approached from the means of substantial factor or result-within-the-risk, the end is the finding of common ground for the purpose of the proximate cause analysis. This Article first summarizes and analyzes the foreseeability based result-within-the-risk approach to proximate cause. Next, the Article summarizes and analyzes the substantial factor test. Finally, the Article explains and analyzes the common ground that appears to have emerged between the two disparate approaches.