Causation and Tort Liability

We say that a person’s act caused harm if the harm would not have occurred had the person not committed the act. More generally, we say that X is a cause of Y if Y would not have occurred in the absence of X. This is the principal meaning of causation and the one which will usually be employed here. It is sometimes referred to as causation in fact, ‘but for’ causation (as in ‘but for X, Y would not have occurred’), or necessary causation, to distinguish it from other concepts of causation that fall under the heading of ‘proximate causation’. Proximate causation will be addressed in a separate section below.