Legal Definitions - causa remota

Causa remota (pronounced KOW-sah reh-MOH-tah) refers to a cause that is distant, indirect, or too far removed in a chain of events to be considered the legally responsible cause of an injury or outcome. While a causa remota might be a factual precursor that set a series of events in motion, the law typically focuses on the proximate cause – the direct, immediate, and legally recognized cause – for assigning liability or responsibility.

In essence, if an event or action is a causa remota, it means it's so far back in the causal chain that it's not considered legally significant for the final result, even if it played some role in the sequence of events.

• Example 1: Personal Injury and Negligence

  Imagine a person decides to take a different route to work one morning because their usual coffee shop was unexpectedly closed. While on this alternative route, they are involved in a car accident caused by another driver who ran a red light.

  In this scenario, the closure of the coffee shop is a causa remota. It's a factual precursor that led the person to be on that specific road at that particular time. However, it is not the legally recognized cause of the accident. The proximate cause would be the other driver's negligent action of running the red light. The coffee shop's closure is too indirect and remote to assign legal responsibility for the accident.

• Example 2: Contractual Breach and Damages

  A software development company delays delivering a custom application to a client by one week, breaching their contract. This delay causes the client to miss an internal deadline for a product launch presentation. Because they missed this presentation, the client's management decides to postpone the product launch by three months, which ultimately results in a minor loss of potential market share.

  Here, the software company's one-week delay is the proximate cause of the client missing the internal presentation. However, the subsequent loss of market share three months later, while factually linked, is likely a causa remota of the initial delay. Too many intervening factors (e.g., market conditions, competitor actions, the client's own marketing decisions during the postponement) occurred between the initial delay and the market share loss for the initial delay to be considered the direct legal cause of that specific financial impact.

• Example 3: Insurance Claims

  A homeowner decides to replace their old, sturdy wooden fence with a new, more decorative but less robust vinyl fence. Six months later, an unusually severe windstorm, classified as a "once-in-a-decade" event, sweeps through the area and completely destroys the new vinyl fence, along with many other fences and structures in the neighborhood.

  The homeowner's decision to install a less robust fence is a causa remota. While it might have contributed to the fence's vulnerability, the proximate cause of the damage was the "act of God" – the unusually severe windstorm. An insurance company would likely attribute the damage to the direct and overwhelming force of the storm, not solely to the homeowner's choice of fence material, especially if the storm was severe enough to damage even more durable structures.