§ 20-3 Negligence - Concurring Cause

• Library: South Carolina Requests to Charge - Civil (SCBar) (2016 Ed.)

§ 20-3 Negligence - Concurring Cause

In determining the question of proximate cause, you must distinguish between an intervening cause and a concurring cause. An intervening cause succeeds or follows that which, for convenience, is called the primary cause; though, as we have seen, it is only the remote cause. Concurring causes operate contemporaneously to produce the injury, so that it would not have happened in the absence of either.

If, by the exercise of reasonable foresight and diligence, a concurring cause should have been foreseen and foreguarded, liability for it attaches. However, the mere fact that one of several concurring causes may not have been reasonably anticipated, is not enough to shield from liability he who sets in motion the other for it is well settled that the negligence complained of need not be the sole cause of the injury. It is enough to show that it is a proximate concurring cause, that is, one that was so efficient in causation that, but for it, the injury would not have occurred.

In other words, the law recognizes that there may be several proximate causes to an event and anyone who is guilty of an act which contributes as a proximate cause and without which the injury complained of would not have occurred is responsible under the doctrine of proximate cause.

There may be more than one proximate cause of an injury...