§ 32-17 Products Liability - Intervening Cause

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

§ 32-17 Products Liability - Intervening Cause

The test by which the negligent conduct of the original wrongdoer is to be insulated as a matter of law by the independent negligent act of another is whether the intervening act and the injury resulting therefrom are of such character that the author of the primary negligence should have reasonably foreseen and anticipated them in the light of attendant circumstances. The law requires only reasonable foresight, and when the injury complained of is not reasonably foreseeable, in the exercise of due care there is no liability. One is not charged with foreseeing that which is unpredictable or that which could not be expected to happen. When the negligence appears merely to have brought about a condition of affairs, or a situation in which another and entirely independent and efficient agency intervenes to cause the injury, the latter is to be deemed the direct or proximate cause, and the former only the indirect or remote cause.

Liability exists for the natural and probable consequences of negligent acts or omissions proximately flowing therefrom. The intervening negligence of a third person will not excuse the first wrongdoer, if such intervention ought to have been foreseen in the exercise of due care. In such case, the original negligence still remains active, and a contributing cause of the injury. The test is to be found in the probable injurious consequences reasonably to be anticipated, and not in the number or exact character of events subsequently arising.

Any cause which is natural and of continuous sequence, unbroken by any efficient intervening cause, produces the result complained of, and without which the result would not have occurred is proximate cause. A prior and remote cause cannot be made the basis of an action if such remote cause did nothing more than furnish the condition or give rise to the occasion by which the injury was made possible, if there intervened between such prior or remote cause and the injury a distinct, successive, and unrelated and efficient cause of the injury, even though such injury would not have happened but for such condition or occasion. If no danger existed in the condition except because of the independent cause, such condition was not the proximate cause. If an independent negligent act or defective condition set into operation the circumstances which result in injury because of the prior defective condition, such subsequent act or condition is the proximate cause.

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