§ 1-20 Proximate Cause

• Library: South Carolina Requests to Charge - Criminal (SCBar) (2023 Ed.)

§ 1-20 Proximate Cause

The law recognizes there may be more than one proximate cause. The acts of two or more persons may combine and concur together as an efficient or proximate cause of the death of a person.

The defendant's act may be regarded as the proximate cause if it is a contributing cause of the death of the deceased. The defendant's act need not be the sole cause of the death provided that it be a proximate cause actually and contributing to the death of the deceased.

It is not a defense to show that the deceased might have recovered had she been treated according to the most approved surgical or medical standards or as a reasonably prudent doctor would have treated in the case or even by showing that the treatment was unskilled or improper or erroneous through negligence. If, however, the death was caused not by the wound or the injury that the deceased had, but was caused...