Note On The Causes of An Accidental Occurrence
| Published date | 01 March 1954 |
| Date | 01 March 1954 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1954.tb00259.x |
N'OTE ON
THE
CAUSES
OF
AN ACCIDENTAL OCCURRENCE
THE causes of an accident continue to give rise to difficulties in the
courts, of which recent examples are to
be
found in
Harvey
v.
Road
Haulage Emecutive
119523
1
K.3.
120;
BiddZe
v.
Tmvox,
etc.
[1951] 2
T.L.R.
968;
Stapley
v.
Gypsum Mines, Ltd.
[l958]
2
All E.R.
478;
Jones
v.
Livox Quarries, Ltd.
[1952]
1
T.L.R.
1877
and
Cork
v.
Kirby Maclean, Ltd.
[1952] 2
T.L.R.
217.
Most of these are cases of accidents in industry, which tend
to
raise more perplexing problems than road accidents, perhaps
because their causes often lie farther back in time.
The object of this note is
to
go back
to
fist principles and
suggest
a
greatly simplified approach to these problems.
Professor Glanville Williams, in his
Joint
Torts
and ContrG
butory
Negligence,
at
pp.
289-41,
thinks that the proper starting
pint is to consider the
"
scientific
"
causes of an occurrence.
I
should disagree with this view
in
any case,
so
far as
it
depends
on
the passage quoted from Professor Ayer as to what is meant by a
scientific cause, because
I
do
not myself feel that logical positivist
philosophy is a safe foundation for legal principles. There is, how-
ever, a more fundamental objection, which does not depend
on
personal tastes in philosophy. Scientists are concerned to discover
universal laws, according to which certain causes always produce,
or
tend
to
produce, certain effects. Lawyers are not concerned with
universal laws, but with the causes of an
individual happening,
and, what is even more important, a happening which has occurred
by chance
or
fortuitously.
The pbsical causes
of
an accident
:
thir mcultiplicity.
Once
it
is
perceived that the inquiry is
into
the causes of a
chance
happening,
a reliable key to all perplexities lies to hand.
It
is
to
be
found in Aristotle's explanation of chance (Metaphysics,
Book
VI).
According to this explanation, there is
no
such thing
as
the cause
of an accident (a truth which lawyers are now
realising after many uncertainties). Chance
or
accident
is
due
to
the fact that the world (whether
of
human affairs
or
of nature)
is made up of many persons and things, each following
a
causal
sequence according to its own nature. Chance happenings result
from the intersection of several distinct causal sequences at one
time and place-Aristotle gives the illustration of a man who has
eaten salty
food,
and therefore goes to quench his thirst at a nearby
fountain.
Robbers, who are hiding by the fountain, spring out
and kill him. Here there are three distinct causal sequences:
Water, percolating beneath the soil, accumulating, and penetrating
134
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