In law and insurance, a proximate cause is an event sufficiently related to an injury that the courts deem the event to be the cause of that injury. There are two types of causation in the law: cause-in-fact, and proximate cause. Cause-in-fact is determined by the "but for" test: But for the action, the result would not have happened. The action is a necessary condition, but may not be a sufficient condition, for the resulting injury. A few circumstances exist where the but-for test is ineffective. Since but-for causation is very easy to show, a second test is used to determine if an action is close enough to a harm in a "chain of events" to be legally valid. This test is called proximate cause. Proximate cause is a key principle of insurance and is concerned with how the loss or damage actually occurred. There are several competing theories of proximate cause. For an act to be deemed to cause a harm, both tests must be met; proximate cause is a legal limitation on cause-in-fact.
Workers' compensation or workers' comp is a form of insurance providing wage replacement and medical benefits to employees injured in the course of employment in exchange for mandatory relinquishment of the employee's right to sue his or her employer for the tort of negligence. The trade-off between assured, limited coverage and lack of recourse outside the worker compensation system is known as "the compensation bargain.” One of the problems that the compensation bargain solved is the problem of employers becoming insolvent as a result of high damage awards. The system of collective liability was created to prevent that and thus to ensure security of compensation to the workers.
In law, liable means "responsible or answerable in law; legally obligated". Legal liability concerns both civil law and criminal law and can arise from various areas of law, such as contracts, torts, taxes, or fines given by government agencies. The claimant is the one who seeks to establish, or prove, liability.
The tort of negligent infliction of emotional distress (NIED) is a controversial cause of action, which is available in nearly all U.S. states but is severely constrained and limited in the majority of them. The underlying concept is that one has a legal duty to use reasonable care to avoid causing emotional distress to another individual. If one fails in this duty and unreasonably causes emotional distress to another person, that actor will be liable for monetary damages to the injured individual. The tort is to be contrasted with intentional infliction of emotional distress in that there is no need to prove intent to inflict distress. That is, an accidental infliction, if negligent, is sufficient to support a cause of action.
Vicarious liability is a form of a strict, secondary liability that arises under the common law doctrine of agency, respondeat superior, the responsibility of the superior for the acts of their subordinate or, in a broader sense, the responsibility of any third party that had the "right, ability or duty to control" the activities of a violator. It can be distinguished from contributory liability, another form of secondary liability, which is rooted in the tort theory of enterprise liability because, unlike contributory infringement, knowledge is not an element of vicarious liability. The law has developed the view that some relationships by their nature require the person who engages others to accept responsibility for the wrongdoing of those others. The most important such relationship for practical purposes is that of employer and employee.
English tort law concerns the compensation for harm to people's rights to health and safety, a clean environment, property, their economic interests, or their reputations. A "tort" is a wrong in civil, rather than criminal law, that usually requires a payment of money to make up for damage that is caused. Alongside contracts and unjust enrichment, tort law is usually seen as forming one of the three main pillars of the law of obligations.
Negligence in employment encompasses several causes of action in tort law that arise where an employer is held liable for the tortious acts of an employee because that employer was negligent in providing the employee with the ability to engage in a particular act. Four basic causes of action may arise from such a scenario: negligent hiring, negligent retention, negligent supervision and negligent training. While negligence in employment may overlap with negligent entrustment and vicarious liability, the concepts are distinct grounds of liability. The doctrine that an employer is liable for torts committed by employees within the scope of their employment is called respondeat superior.
The Federal Employers' Liability Act (FELA), 45 U.S.C. § 51 et seq. (1908), is a United States federal law that protects and compensates railroaders injured on the job.
In RePolemis & Furness, Withy & Co Ltd (1921) is an English tort case on causation and remoteness in the law of negligence.
Negligent entrustment is a cause of action in United States tort law which arises where one party is held liable for negligence because they negligently provided another party with a dangerous instrumentality, and the entrusted party caused injury to a third party with that instrumentality. The cause of action most frequently arises where one person allows another to drive their automobile.
Fairchild v Glenhaven Funeral Services Ltd [2002] UKHL 22 is a leading case on causation in English tort law. It concerned malignant mesothelioma, a deadly disease caused by breathing asbestos fibres. The House of Lords approved the test of "materially increasing risk" of harm, as a deviation in some circumstances from the ordinary "balance of probabilities" test under the "but for" standard.
Albro v. The Agawam Canal Co., 6 Cush. 75, was a case in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court that contributed to the "fellow servant rule".
Vicarious liability in English law is a doctrine of English tort law that imposes strict liability on employers for the wrongdoings of their employees. Generally, an employer will be held liable for any tort committed while an employee is conducting their duties. This liability has expanded in recent years following the decision in Lister v Hesley Hall Ltd to better cover intentional torts, such as sexual assault and deceit. Historically, it was held that most intentional wrongdoings were not in the course of ordinary employment, but recent case law suggests that where an action is closely connected with an employee's duties, an employer can be found vicariously liable. The leading case is now the Supreme Court decision in Catholic Child Welfare Society v Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, which emphasised the concept of "enterprise risk".
Devlin v. Smith, 89 N.Y. 470 (1882) was a seminal case decided by the New York Court of Appeals in the area of product liability law.
Lister v Romford Ice and Cold Storage Co Ltd[1956] UKHL 6 is an important English tort law, contract law and labour law, which concerns vicarious liability and an ostensible duty of an employee to compensate the employer for torts he commits in the course of employment.
The status of a seaman in admiralty law provides maritime workers with protections such as payment of wages, working conditions, and remedies for workplace injuries under the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, and the doctrines of "unseaworthiness" and "maintenance and cure". Each of these remedies have the same criteria for the status of "seaman". Having the status of "seaman" provides maritime employees with benefits that are not available to those without the status. However, the determination of who is a "seaman" is complex.
The Workers' Compensation Board of British Columbia, operating as WorkSafeBC, is a statutory agency that came into existence in 1917, after the provincial legislature put into force legislation passed in 1902. This legislation is known as the Workers Compensation Act.
Common employment was an historical defence in English tort law that said workers implicitly undertook the risks of being injured by their co-workers, with whom they were in "common employment". The US labor law terminology was the "fellow servant rule".
Viasystems (Tyneside) Ltd v Thermal Transfer (Northern) Ltd[2005] EWCA Civ 1151 is an English tort law and UK labour law case, which held that a worker can have more than one employer at the same time, who will be vicariously liable for the worker.
Workers' compensation in the United States is a primarily state-based system of workers' compensation.
