Have you been hurt in an accident in Las Vegas? Maybe you slipped on a wet casino floor, got hit by a distracted driver on the Strip, or suffered from a medical procedure gone wrong. When you’re in pain and facing medical bills, you’ll want to know if someone else is legally responsible for your injuries. You may start wondering, “What is proximate cause?” The answer is that it’s a key part of winning your personal injury case and getting the money you deserve.
What Is Proximate Cause?
Proximate cause, also called proximate causation, is what legally connects someone’s careless action to your injury. It means their action directly led to you getting hurt, and without their action, you wouldn’t have been injured.
The Nevada Jury Instructions define it this way: “A proximate cause of injury, damage, loss or harm is a cause which, in natural and continuous sequence, produces the injury, damage, loss, or harm, and without which the injury, damage, loss, or harm, would not have occurred.”
Here’s a simpler definition of proximate cause: It’s the source that creates a direct chain of events leading to your injury. If someone runs a red light and hits your car, their decision to ignore that traffic signal is the proximate cause of your injuries.
Actual vs. Proximate Cause
Actual cause (also called “actual causation” or “cause in fact”) is simpler: It’s what directly caused the injury in a physical sense. In the car accident example above, the collision between vehicles is the actual cause of your injuries.
Proximate cause goes deeper. It’s how we make the connection between the negligence of the driver and your injury, and determine whether the law should hold that person responsible. The main difference between proximate cause vs. cause in fact is that proximate cause considers things like whether your injury was foreseeable and additional factors that played a part.
Elements of Proximate Cause
Understanding the definition of proximate cause gets easier when you break it down into its key parts. Let’s look at what courts and insurance companies consider when looking at proximate cause torts.
Natural Result
For proximate cause to exist, your injury must be a natural result of the other person’s wrongful act. This means there needs to be an unbroken chain between what they did and the harm you suffered.
Courts often use what’s called the “but for” test when there’s only one cause involved. They ask: “But for the defendant’s actions, would the injury have happened?” If the answer is no, then proximate cause likely exists.
This element also considers whether anything unexpected happened that might “break the chain” of proximate causation. For instance, if you stumble when a faulty escalator suddenly stops, but you’re not actually injured until another panicked patron pushes you down, the courts will need to weigh the true proximate cause. There’s now a question about whether the casino’s negligence in maintaining the escalator is the proximate cause of the loss, or if the bystander’s actions broke the chain of causation.
Reasonable Foreseeability
The “reasonable person” standard is central to proximate cause. It asks whether a reasonable person should have been able to foresee that their action (or inaction) might lead to harm. In other words, foreseeability is the test for proximate cause.
This doesn’t mean they needed to predict the exact injury you suffered. They just needed to reasonably foresee that some harm might result from their behavior.
Take a casino that keeps serving alcohol to someone who’s clearly drunk. A reasonable person would foresee that the intoxicated guest might fall, get in a fight, or cause an accident. If that drunk guest is the person who pushed you down the escalator in our previous example, the casino could still have proximately caused your injuries.
Substantial Factor
Real-life accidents often have multiple causes working together. When this is the case, courts apply the “substantial factor” test instead of the “but for” test. Under this test, someone’s action is a proximate cause if it played a significant role in causing your injury, even if it wasn’t the only cause.
The substantial factor test prevents defendants from escaping responsibility by pointing to other causes. They can’t say, “Well, other things contributed to the accident, so I’m not responsible.” If their action was a substantial factor, they can still be held liable for your injuries.
This test is especially important in complex cases like medical malpractice or car accidents involving multiple parties. Your attorney will work to show how each defendant’s actions significantly contributed to your harm.
Examples of Proximate Cause
Looking at real-life proximate cause examples can help make the definition clearer. Here’s how proximate cause works in different kinds of accidents:
- Car accident: A driver texts while driving on Las Vegas Boulevard, takes their eyes off the road, and causes a car accident. Their texting is the proximate cause of your whiplash injuries because a reasonable person knows texting while driving creates a danger.
- Truck accident: A trucking company skips required brake maintenance on their fleet to save money. While driving through Nevada, the brakes fail on a steep hill, causing the truck to crash into your vehicle. The company’s failure to maintain the brakes is the proximate cause of the truck accident and your injuries.
- Slip and fall: A casino employee mops a floor but doesn’t put up a “wet floor” sign. You don’t see the wet area, slip and fall, and break your wrist. The failure to warn you about the wet floor is the proximate cause of your injury.
- Medical malpractice: A doctor prescribes you medication without checking your medical history. You have an allergic reaction that sends you to the hospital. The doctor’s failure to review your history is the proximate cause of your reaction.
- Product liability: A manufacturer sells a defective ladder that collapses when you’re using it as directed. The manufacturing defect is the proximate cause of your back injury from the fall and you may have a product liability claim.
Proving Proximate Cause in a Personal Injury Case
While defining what proximate cause is can be easy, proving it in your specific case may not be. Not every accident happens because someone did something wrong. Sometimes accidents happen because of uncontrollable factors like sudden severe weather, an unexpected medical emergency, or truly unforeseeable circumstances.
When you work with a personal injury attorney, they’ll investigate whether someone else caused or contributed to your accident. They know what evidence to look for and how to connect the dots between what someone did (or didn’t do) and your injuries.
For example, in a Las Vegas motorcycle accident case, your attorney might gather:
- Traffic surveillance camera footage
- Dashcam footage
- Photos of the accident scene
- Maintenance records for the vehicles involved
- Phone records to check for texting while driving
- Statements from people who saw what happened
- Input from accident reconstruction experts
- Your medical records showing the exact injuries you suffered
- Road condition reports
- Weather data from the time of the accident
The evidence needed depends on your specific case. A casino-related injury might require security footage and maintenance logs, while a medical malpractice case might need expert testimony from other doctors.
Need to Prove Proximate Cause? Call an Expert
If you’ve been injured in Las Vegas, you don’t have to figure out what proximate cause is on your own. The Blackburn Wirth Injury Team can review your case and help determine if someone else is legally responsible for your injuries. We understand Nevada’s personal injury laws and know how to build a strong case that proves all the elements needed to win.Get a free case evaluation today to learn about your options and how we can help you move forward. The sooner you call, the sooner we can start gathering evidence and fighting for the compensation you deserve.
