Examples of Proximate Cause in a Personal Injury Case

Bill Allen | September 20, 2024 | Personal Injury

Examples of Proximate Cause in a Personal Injury Case

If you get injured in an accident that wasn’t your fault, you’re likely entitled to filing a personal injury claim against the responsible party. However, even though the law affords you this opportunity, you’ll need to establish liability in order to recover compensation.

In personal injury cases, the injured victim has the initial burden of proof. You will need to present enough proof to establish each legal element of your claim “by a preponderance of the evidence,” which means that your claim is more likely than not to be true.

Most personal injury claims are based on negligence. One legal element of negligence is causation, and proximate causation is one of two types that must be proven. Continue reading to learn more about negligence so that you can know what to expect for your case.

What Is Negligence?

Negligence is a legal term of art that means essentially the same thing as “carelessness.” The vast majority of personal injury cases are based on negligence. Someone commits negligence when they fail to act as a reasonable person would in a similar situation.

There are four legal elements required to prove a negligence claim:

Duty of care is about ensuring the situation is one in which reasonable caution is required. This element is usually not difficult to establish, but it can be in some cases. An example of a duty of care is the duty to drive safely and obey traffic laws. 

Breach of duty means figuring out whether the other party acted unreasonably. Running a red light would likely constitute a breach of the duty of care to drive safely.

Damages means showing that you’ve suffered injuries and/or financial losses due to the accident.

In the following section, we are going to take a closer look at the third element of negligence: causation. 

The Causation Element

There are two types of causation you must establish, factual and proximate. Factual cause (also referred to as direct cause or “but for” cause) is what most people think of when they consider what causation means. 

If the car accident wouldn’t have happened “but for” the other driver’s actions, factual cause is present. For example, if the other driver hadn’t run a red light, they would not have hit your vehicle and injured you.

Proximate cause is a little bit more nuanced. It is about making sure there is a reasonable connection between the other party’s actions and your injuries. In other words, factual causation isn’t enough. 

Why? Because otherwise all sorts of undesirable consequences could result. You could, for instance, hold the other driver’s mother responsible for the accident if there was only factual cause. “But for” the mother giving birth to the driver, the accident would not have occurred technically speaking.

That is an absurd result, and so we must also ensure that proximate cause is satisfied. Proximate cause is met when it is reasonably foreseeable that the defendant’s actions would lead to the type of accident/injuries in question.

Examples of Proximate Cause

It can be helpful to see some examples of how proximate cause works in practice, as the concept might seem otherwise too vague. Here are a few for you to consider:

  • Driver A believes that Driver B is tailgating them, and they make a “brake checking” maneuver in response. This causes an accident, injuring Driver B. Proximate causation is likely met here because it is reasonably foreseeable that brake checking can lead to a rear-end accident.
  • A person becomes sick because their doctor prescribes them the wrong medication. Proximate cause is met because it is foreseeable that taking the wrong medication can lead to an illness.
  • Someone gets hurt because they slip and fall on a wet spot on the floor that wasn’t cleaned or marked for warning. The property owner would be responsible for ensuring that there was a visual warning for the condition. Proximate cause is likely satisfied because it is foreseeable that failing to warn visitors of a wet spot could cause them to slip and fall, injuring themselves.

Proximate cause isn’t always obvious, but it’s a critical component of making sure we hold people responsible for their actions in a manner that makes sense.

Damages You Can Obtain in a Personal Injury Case

In Florida, accident victims can recover economic and non-economic damages primarily. Punitive damages are only available in rare cases.

Economic damages are for your financial expenses, such as:

Non-economic damages are for your more subjective kinds of losses, including:

Your case must generally go to trial to receive punitive damages. These damages require “clear and convincing evidence,” which is stronger than the “by a preponderance of the evidence” standard discussed earlier. 

Contact Our Gainesville Personal Injury Law Firm in North Central Florida

Negligence claims can require substantial time and effort to prove fully and effectively. It’s one thing to settle your claim, but it’s another to actually secure the maximum compensation available to you under

If you need legal assistance, contact the Gainesville personal injury lawyers at Allen Law Accident & Injury Lawyers at your nearest location to schedule a free consultation today.

We have three convenient locations in North Central Florida:

Allen Law Accident & Injury Lawyers – Gainesville office
2550 SW 76th St #150
Gainesville, FL 32608
(877) 255-3652

Allen Law Accident & Injury Lawyers – Downtown Gainesville
621 W University Ave
Gainesville, FL 32601
(866) 928-6292

Allen Law Accident & Injury Lawyers – Ocala Office
112 S Pine Ave
Ocala, FL 34471
(352) 351-3258