Category Archives: Causation
Ahson Azmat, ‘Formal Causation in the Law’
ABSTRACT The but-for test has bedeviled the law for decades now. Over the last few years, however, the Supreme Court has cemented it as the centerpiece of the law’s model for factual causation. This spells trouble in a landscape brimming with disputes about disparate treatment, equal protection, Executive Branch action, and other constitutional rights whose […]
Richard Wright, ‘Causation and Legal Responsibility’
ABSTRACT In part 1 of this article, published in the CTLA Forum Winter 2025 at pages 18-22, 40-45, I discuss the substantial confusion regarding the required elements for tort liability caused by the Connecticut courts’ and the first and second Restatements’ lumping together the actual causation and scope of liability elements under the question-begging and […]
Robertson and Rhodes, ‘Causation’s Due Process Dimensions’
ABSTRACT For decades, courts have grappled with the tension between compensating victims of mass harms and maintaining fairness to defendants when causation is difficult to prove. This Article argues that the Supreme Court’s due process jurisprudence provides a relevant framework for navigating this tension. We contend that the Court over the last three decades has […]
Haley Todd Newsome, ‘Advancing Tort Law for Climate Displacement Compensation’
ABSTRACT Climate change has already displaced people from their homes and is predicted to displace millions more in the coming decades. Involuntary climate-induced migration causes loss and damage before, during, and after the displacement. In this Note, I argue that the climate displaced should seek tort compensation from fossil fuel companies for this loss and […]
‘But-for What? When Anti-Discrimination Law Tried to Borrow from Tort Law and Missed Something’, Robin Dembroff and Issa Kohler-Hausmann, University of Toronto and online, 20 September 2024
The talk will be a hybrid talk, taking place in person at the University of Toronto Centre for Ethics (15 Devonshire Place), with a synchronous broadcast on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/live/FbP8fecnE-E. Courts and commentators often define discrimination in causal terms. Moreover, they often claim that the causal definition of discrimination tracks the role that causality plays establishing […]
Chen Meng Lam, ‘The End of SAAMCO Counterfactual? Charles B Lawrence & Associates v Intercommercial Bank Limited (Trinidad and Tobago) [2021] UKPC 30′
ABSTRACT The recent decision in Charles B Lawrence & Associates v Intercommercial Bank Limited (Trinidad and Tobago) [2021] UKPC 30 serves as a salutary reminder that the SAAMCO counterfactual can be more of a hindrance than help in identifying the extent of a claimant’s loss that falls within the defendant’s scope of duty. In Lawrence, […]
Choi Young Jae, ‘Falsifying falsification’
ABSTRACT Almost a decade after the UKSC’s decision of AIB v Redler, there remains significant academic criticism and judicial scepticism towards the employment of causal inquiries in equity’s remedial response to trustees’ misapplications of trust property. This article seeks to defend AIB, and the causal principles enunciated therein, from those criticisms. It does so by […]
‘Damages: Symposium Presentation of Anthony Sebok’
ABSTRACT Restatement of the Law Third, Torts: Liability for Physical and Emotional Harm §27 adopts the ‘Anderson Rule’, stating that a simultaneous sufficient cause does not prevent a tortious actor from being considered a cause-in-fact and thus potentially liable for the harm caused. However, Comment d of §27 reserves the issue of apportioning liability among […]
Patricia de Moraes Paisani Matthey Claudet, ‘Michael Holmes v Poeton Holdings Ltd [2023] EWCA Civ 1377: a necessary clarification for a non “de minimis” discussion in causation’
INTRODUCTION Establishing factual causation is one of the most challenging steps to assess the feasibility of potential claims in the Tort of Negligence, especially in nuanced circumstances where the injury sustained by the claimant can originate from multiple causes. This is particularly sensitive in occupational health and medical negligence claims. In some of these cases, […]
Ole Andreas Rognstad, ‘Creations Caused by Humans (or Robots)? Artificial Intelligence and Causation Requirements for Copyright Protection in EU Law’
ABSTRACT The current legal framework for protecting works of authorship in EU law presupposes that the work is the author’s ‘own intellectual creation’. The requirement is challenged in an environment where AI is used in creative processes. It is presumed that the concept of ‘own intellectual creation’ implies a causation requirement in that creation must […]