While Jessica, Ashley, and Bryan are snowboarding, they ignore warning signs indicating that they have left the marked trail and are entering dangerous territory where they become lost. While climbing the mountain as part of the rescue effort, a snowplow accidentally cuts a nearby town's main electrical cable. Due to the loss of her electric heat, Ethel, an elderly woman, dies of hypothermia. The boarders' negligence in ignoring the warning signs is:

Question

a. not the cause of Ethel's death.
b. the superseding cause of Ethel's death.
c. the proximate cause of Ethel's death.
d. the causation in fact, but not the proximate cause, of Ethel's death.

Answer 1

d. the causation in fact, but not the proximate cause, of Ethel's death.

Rationale: Actual causation ("but for") requires only a connection between the action and the result. Proximate cause means, in this case, that the death was foreseeable. To be liable, the snowboarders' actions must have been both the cause in fact and the proximate cause, of Ethel's death. Here, the boarders' negligence was the actual cause of Ethel's death because she would not have died but for their actions, which led to the lack of electricity in the city. The connection between the failure to heed the warning signs and Ethel's death is not strong enough, however, to be the proximate cause of her death. Ethel's death required a series of other connected events that a reasonable person could not have foreseen. The snowplow's actions were a superseding (intervening) cause that broke the causal connection between the boarders' actions and Ethel's death.