Category Archives: Causation
Melody Hadfield, ‘Post-Breach Events, Itemisation and the Avoided Loss Rule’
ABSTRACT In English law, the following equation is used to compute damages awards: (a) loss sustained in consequence of the breach of duty (‘prima facie loss’) minus (b) benefits obtained as a result of the breach of duty = (c) net loss. This paper explores the manner in which prima facie loss is defined. It […]
‘Material Contribution and Covid-19 – Rehman v Secretary of State for Health and Social Care & Others [2026] EWHC 6 (KB)’
INTRODUCTION In Rehman, Master Davison considered applications by the Defendants to strike out twenty-three claims arising from deaths in care homes from Covid-19 during the pandemic. The claims were brought under the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1934 and the Fatal Accidents Act 1976. All but one of the Claimants alleged that the Secretary of […]
Jiahe Zed Zhang, ‘With Greater Causal Power Comes Greater Responsibility – Or Does It?’
ABSTRACT A popular view holds that an agent’s moral responsibility for an outcome is proportional to the causal contribution of their actions to that outcome, all else being equal. This paper challenges this view. I argue that there are counterexamples because some causal difference-makers (that is, factors that can influence the degree of causal contribution) […]
Steel and Williams, ‘Constructing the no breach counterfactual: the preclusionary rule’
INTRODUCTION When compensation is claimed for breach of a private law duty, it is typically quantified by reference to a counterfactual in which the defendant did not commit the breach. The ‘preclusionary rule’, as we will call it, is relevant to the construction of this counterfactual. This rule sometimes prevents parties from populating the counterfactual […]
Stephen Bailey, ‘The limits of Fairchild: scientific impossibility’
PRINCIPLES It is clear law that, to establish causation in fact in a tort case, it must normally be shown that the defendant’s wrongful act or omission played a necessary part in bringing about the harm (commonly loss or damage, sometimes invasion of a protected right). The most significant exception comprises cases where it is […]
Nazmul Hasan, ‘Quantum and Damages in International Commercial Arbitration: Causation, Valuation, Lost Profits and the Limits of Expert Evidence’
ABSTRACT Damages are often the point at which international commercial arbitration moves from legal principle to economic consequence. Yet quantum is frequently treated as a technical appendix to liability rather than as a distinct adjudicative exercise governed by causation, remoteness, certainty, mitigation and the compensatory principle. This article develops an integrated framework for assessing quantum […]
Northon Salomão De Oliveira, ‘Artificial Intelligence Liability and Tort Law: Causation, Foreseeability, and Legal Responsibility for Autonomous AI Harm’
ABSTRACT Tort doctrine allocates liability for machine-caused harm by asking what a reasonable manufacturer could have foreseen at the moment a product left its hands. That question assumes a product whose risk profile is fixed at the point of sale. Autonomous artificial intelligence systems violate this assumption: their decision-making capacities change after deployment through continued […]
John Bruegger, ‘Against Formalist Reductionism: A Pragmatic-Contextualist Defense of Substantial Factor Causation’
ABSTRACT The judiciary’s recent shift from ‘substantial factor’ causation toward a rigid, binary ‘but-for’ standard promises metaphysical clarity but delivers an epistemic crisis. In complex, multifactorial litigation like toxic torts and pharmaceutical harms, strict counterfactual testing fails, insulating tortfeasors whenever causal mechanisms resist mechanical proof. Grounding legal inquiry in pragmatic contextualism, this Article defends substantial […]
Travis Gilly, ‘The Wrong Verb: Etiological Framing and the AI Psychosis Litigation’
ABSTRACT Seven product liability actions filed against OpenAI in California in November 2025 allege that a chatbot caused psychotic episodes in their users. The peer-reviewed clinical literature on which those claims must ultimately rest does not use that verb. Across research groups at UCSF, Aarhus, the Université de Montréal, and UCLA, investigators describe AI as […]
Fong Jun Yi, ‘On Causation and Accounts of Profits: Rukhadze v Recovery Partners GP Ltd’
ABSTRACT In the recent case of Rukhadze v Recovery Partners GP Ltd, the UK Supreme Court was given the opportunity to reconsider the House of Lords’ previous formulations of the account of profits doctrine in Regal (Hastings) Ltd v Gulliver and Boardman v Phipps. It was concluded that the position in Regal and Boardman regarding […]