Tort Law - Remoteness

Remoteness is another key element of tort law that examines the link between the duty of care owed by the defendant to the loss suffered by the claimant. Remoteness is also known as legal causation and most commonly sits alongside factual causation.

There are a number of different people or things that can act as a novus actus interveniens (new intervening act) and break the chain of causation. This includes third parties extraneous to the case, other events such as acts of God (Carslogie Steamship Co. v Royal Norwegian Government [1952]) and even the actions of the claimant herself (Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945) can act to break the chain of causation.

In terms of a test for remoteness, Lord Reid in Dorset Yacht Co. v Home Office [1970] argued that an intervening act must be less than "very likely" to happen whereas Oliver L.J. in Lamb v Camden LBC [1985] submitted that an Intervening act is what the reasonable man “would actually foresee if he thought about it”.

Lord Denning in Lamb was not particularly satisfied with either of these tests and instead noted that a range of policy factors play a part when a court is coming to a decision.

As an example the actions of rescuers will rarely be seen as breaking the chain of causation (The Oropesa [1943]) unless those actions are especially foolish (Knightley v Johns [1982]).

Acts of the claimant can end up being a complete or partial defence for a defendant (McKew v Holland [1969]). However the claimant still has to have acted negligently rather than by her own volition, they are held to the same standard of the reasonable man (Pigney v Pointer’s Services [1957]) and there must also be factual and legal causation (Jones v Livox Quarries [1952]).

The extent of the damage that any defendant will be liable for was limited in The Wagon Mound (No. 1) [1961] when it was held that defendants will only be liable for the kinds of damage that could have reasonably been foreseen. Nevertheless the practical effect of this case was mitigated by the egg shell skull rule (Smith v Leech Brain [1962]) to cover any kind of physical harm. The rules for property damage are slightly more stringent (The Liesbosch [1933]) but even here the claimant will still be able to make a full claim so long as they have mitigated their losses (Alcoa Minerals of Jamaica Inc v Broderick [2002]; Lagden v O’Connor [2004]).

For pure economic loss where a person has a duty of care to provide information and that information forms the basis for another person’s action; they are (when negligent) only liable for foreseeable consequences of the information being wrong (SAAMCO [1999]).