There are a couple different philosophical views that relate to causation. Among them, Hart and Honore describe consequences in terms of causes and conditions. For them, a deductive reasoning from the end results of an action can help trace and attribute the causes and conditions that are necessary to establish in all tort claims. They base their distinction between causes and conditions in two ways. One, “To consequences no limit can be set” (Hart and Honore 569). And two, “Every event which would not have happened if an earlier event had not happened is the consequence of that earlier event” (Hart and Honore 569). These premises are important in their application to the causal effects of the trial set before us.
The first premise they use is broader in the sense that it determines which events are relevant to the injury. It holds that the truck driver and Mr. Gunter are the limits within the causation of Mr. Lynch’s damaged ankle. No other event can be found to be the cause of the Plaintiff’s damages. Furthermore, the second premise “defines consequence in terms of a ‘necessary condition’” (Hart and Honore 569), rather than as a result of a number of other consequences. This is the meat of their separation of causes and conditions. For them, “an act is the cause of harm if it is both necessary to the occurrence of the harm and sufficient to produce it without the cooperation of the voluntary or deliberate acts of others or abnormal conjunction of events” (Adams 559).
In this case, the mentally deranged state of Mr. Gunter makes it difficult to conclude whom to attribute the liability of the Plaintiff’s damaged ankle. However, under the circumstances that the truck driver negligently parked on the side of the road impeding following traffic, gives Hart and Honore reason to believe that the truck driver was a necessary condition of the result. It appears that without the truck parked there none of the following events would have occurred. But the fact that Gunter made no effort to avoid the collision sets up a new course of actions. This is the case of the man who threw a cigarette into bracken and then, just as the flame was about to go out, another man, represented as Gunter, doused the bracken with gasoline to start a forest fire. Like the man who could have avoided using the gasoline, Gunter could have avoided the parked truck with proper attention of the road. In addition, the damage upon Lynch’s ankle could not have happened without the use of Gunter’s gun and impaired judgment of Gunter. Therefore, he must be the cause of the end result. The facts that he was concealing a gun in his car and was in a state of delirium are yet other necessary conditions, ones that resulted from his careless collision.
In contemporary philosophy of law, Judith Thomson would argue against Hart and Honore’s assessment of causality. She believes that until recently, tort claims were hard to conclude because of the difficulty in proving causality. She notices that this notion also affected moral theory on causality and, as a response, she claimed a ‘decline in cause’ in both law and moral theory.
In Lynch v. Fisher, Thomson would never endorse strict liability. In the truck driver’s defense, the operation of the truck was faulty and made him suddenly stop on the side of the road in a presumably dangerous area. And in Gunter’s defense, he was unlucky the truck was parked the way it was, and unlucky once more when his disoriented state caused him to accidently shoot the plaintiff in the ankle. It is already proven that the mental state of Gunter has pardoned him from the damages of the plaintiff. Coincidentally, the same pardoning could be given to the truck driver. That is, the malfunction of his vehicle made him panic and park in an unknowingly unsafe spot on the road. However, this is not to say no one is liable for the damages done to the plaintiff. Clearly, both the truck driver and Mr. Gunter should be liable although the intent or the foreseeability of their actions could have never been administered. Thomson is the first to recognize that accidents shouldn’t dismiss the liability of the parties that created the accident. As a result, she believes that whether or not the truck driver or Gunter is found as the cause of Lynch’s injury doesn’t really extend to the fact that both are liable for the damages. In effect, this is the ‘decline of cause’ in law.
Moreover, Thomson’s argument against sole liability is be fortified by the fact of each man’s negligence. The truck driver’s negligent parking and Gunter’s negligent driving make them equally negligent and thus, equally liable. This is the case of the man not looking while backing out of his driveway. In the first scenario he doesn’t hit a kid but in the second he does. Shame on him for not looking the second time! However, Thomson says, “The moral sophisticate may concede that the law does well to mark a difference between [each scenario]” (Thomson 579), but that, in essence, each act of negligence is equally wrong. Therefore, to blame the negligent truck driver for the series of events leading to the injury or to blame Gunter’s negligence for crashing then shooting the plaintiff is also wrong. As a result, Thomson, in her claim of the ‘decline of cause’ in moral theory, says both defendants are equally liable.
These views of causality make a wide range for debate. On one side, Hart and Honore say that all actions previous to the consequences can’t be equally identified as the proximate causes, but that there are necessary conditions in which the consequences occur. On the other side, Thomson claims the need for causality is, in effect, declining because of the difficulty in determining who or what is the proximate cause. I think both philosophies give rise to a greater outcome that can be applied to the case of Lynch v. Fisher.
In this case, the truck driver’s initial action of parking the truck was inarguably negligent due to the facts that the truck obstructed a portion of the right-hand side of the road and it had no tail lights nor any other sign to warn following traffic. But can we deem this the proximate cause? Was it reasonably foreseeable to attribute all of the following consequences to the truck driver’s negligence or that there was no intervening cause to supersede the initial cause? In effect, this is the incident of the defendant, Robert Gunter. “The plaintiff properly alleged that the defendant Gunter was mentally deranged and rendered temporarily insane as the result of the collision…” (Adams 562). That being said, since the truck driver made no effort to warn following traffic or pull further off the side of the road there must be some liability at stake. Likewise, this is the case for Mr. Gunter. Since he made no attempt to avoid the collision he is liable for whatever consequence he directly or indirectly has caused thereafter. However, the entire case is brought to life by the fact that the plaintiff was shot in the ankle by a delirious and mentally deranged Mr. Gunter. This, in fact, should dismiss Mr. Gunter because, “The plaintiff properly alleged that the defendant Gunter was mentally deranged and rendered temporarily insane as the result of the collision…” (Adams 562). Thus, the damages the plaintiff sustained ought to be compensated by whoever is more liable in the entire spectrum of the incident. This can be administered at the truck driver’s expense. The truck driver was proven to have parked negligently in a spot that was foreseeably a hazard and possibly illegal that resulted in one death and nearly two others. Although Gunter shot the plaintiff, it is clear that the negligence of the truck driver overrides his act of negligence. That is not to say any issuance of causation has been set forth upon the truck driver, but instead, a contract of liability was put in motion the moment he departed from the parked truck.
Works Cited
Adams, David. Philosophical Problems in the Law. 4th ed. Pomona, CA: Wadsworth, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc., 2005. Print.
From H. L. A. hart and A. M. Honore, Causation in the Law, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), pp. 68-83. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.
From Judith Jarvis Thomson, “The Decline of Cause,” The Georgetown Law Journal, Vol. 76 (1987), pp. 137-150. Reprinted by permission of the Georgetown Law Journal Association.
