Legal Definitions - causal

Causal refers to something that relates to or involves a cause-and-effect relationship. In legal terms, it describes the direct connection between an action, event, or omission and a resulting outcome, injury, or damage.

Here are some examples illustrating the concept of "causal":

• Imagine a situation where a homeowner fails to repair a broken step on their porch, despite knowing it's a hazard. A visitor then trips on that broken step, falls, and sustains an injury. In this scenario, the homeowner's failure to repair the step is considered causal to the visitor's injury. There is a direct and identifiable link between the homeowner's inaction and the resulting harm.

• Consider a pharmaceutical company that releases a new medication without adequately testing for all potential side effects. Patients who take the medication subsequently develop a rare illness directly linked to one of these untested side effects. The company's insufficient testing and subsequent release of the drug would be deemed causal to the patients' illnesses. The company's actions directly led to the adverse health outcomes.

• Suppose a software company releases an update with a critical bug that causes a significant data loss for its users. The bug in the software update is causal to the data loss experienced by the users. The update directly initiated the sequence of events that resulted in the loss of data.