An intervening injury is a defense often used in negligent claims. If an injury occurs to you after a prior injury that is currently in litigation, this may cut off the liability for the defendant’s act in the matter and the case may be thrown out of court.
A negligence claim requires that a third party’s action caused the injury and that the injury was foreseeable. An intervening cause may break the connection between the injury and the defendant’s action subsequently destroying a negligence claim. If the intervening cause is foreseeable, however, the defendant will still be liable.
There are two types of intervening causes:
• Dependent intervening causes are set in motion by the defendant and will usually not relieve the third party of liability.
• Independent intervening causes are events that arise totally independent of any action by the third party. If it is unforeseeable and causes the harm, it relieves the third party of liability.
What Is Intervening Cause?
The most common forms of intervening causes can be acts of nature such as weather, earthquakes, and animal attacks, or criminal conduct. If the weather was reasonably foreseeable, however, this will not absolve the defendant of liability. So if the weather report warned of bad weather or it was clear to the average person that the weather would be bad, this claim will not succeed.
If you are involved in a current personal injury case and an intervening injury occurs, contact the skilled Attorneys of Jeffers Denver Law to assist you in proving that the intervening injury is not a cause for dismissal of the initial lawsuit.
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