Elements of a negligence action: duty, breach, causation, and damages.
Defendant will be held liable only for those injuries he actually caused.
There are two causation requirements: causation in fact and proximate causation/legal causation.
Causation in fact requires that the defendant's act contributed to producing the plaintiff's injury.
Negligence that dien't cause the injury is "negligence in the air" or negligence irrelevant to the injury and is thus not actionable.
The "but for" test is applied to determine whether the defendant's act caused the plaintiff's harm. "if the event would not have happened but for that conduct. Conversely, that the defendant's conduct is not a cause of the event if the event would have occurred without it.
defendant's act mus be a "sine qua non" of the plaintiff's injury.
Sine qua non: without which it is not; an indipsensable requisite
It is not a defense for one negligent actor that there was another negligent actor that caused the accident, too. There is no requirement that the defendant's act be the sole "but for" cause of the injury, only that it be a "but for" cause.
Sufficient but necessary dilemma: when either of two or more defendant's acts would have caused the plaintiff's injury. The defendant's act was sufficient but not necessary to cause the injury.
a significant factor test is used to deterimine which acts were significant factors in the injury.
If multiple acts, each of which alone would have been a factual cause of the physical harm at the same time, each act is regarded as a factual cause of the harm.
Summers v. Tice stands for the proposition that where two or more defendants commit substantially similar negligent acts, one of which caused the plaintiff's injury, the burden of proof shifts to each defendant to show that he did not cause the harm.
If both could have caused the injury and one of them clearly did, but they can't prove which one, the court will find for the plaintiff against all defendants. The burden is on the defendants to prove who caused or didn't cause the injury.
In a tort case, the plaintiff must prove that the defendant's tortious conduct created the injury, not just that the defendant's act caused it.
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