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8. Causation and remoteness of damage

This chapter discusses the concepts of causation and remoteness of damage. Once it has been shown that a defendant owed the claimant a duty to take care and was in breach of that duty, liability can still be avoided if it can be shown that the breach did not cause the damage, or that the damage was too remote a consequence of the breach. Causation is initially determined on the balance of probabilities—a ‘but for’ test. A causation problem usually occurs when we look at the damage and see that it was actually caused by a number of different factors either combining together to bring about the damage, or each being sufficient in and of itself to have done so but where it cannot be determined which factor actually caused the harm. A remoteness problem can arise in two different situations: where the claimant is a foreseeable claimant and the damage has in fact been caused by the defendant’s act, but where the damage is either unpredictable in extent or unpredictable in nature.