Can a defendant be held responsible for a plaintiff’s harm simply because the harms followed them in time?
British Columbia, Canada
The following excerpt is from Joinson v. Heran, 2011 BCSC 727 (CanLII):
Finding a defendant’s actions responsible for a plaintiff’s harm simply because the harms followed them in time can easily lead to a false conclusion. Ehrcke J. cautioned against the dangers of this well-known logical fallacy. He suggested that where temporal connections between two events form the basis for conclusions about the relationship between them, a judge must carefully examine the causes : White v. Stonestreet, 2006 BCSC 801, at paras. 75-76.
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