Cause and Condition

-In the case of Phoenix Construction v. IAC, the Supreme Court adopted the view that it is no longer
practicable to distinguish between cause and condition. What is more important, however, are the nature
of the risk and character of the intervening cause.

Prior and Remote Cause

-Cannot be made as the basis of an action in as much as such remote cause did nothing more than furnish
the condition or give rise to the occasion by which the injury was made possible, if there intervened
between such prior or remote cause and the injury a distinct, successive, unrelated, and efficient cause of
the injury, even though such injury would not have happened but for such condition or occasion.

Types of Dangerous Conditions

a. Those that are inherently dangerous

-The smallest application of force, or small change in conditions can release or otherwise set in
motion large forces that can cause harm in the narrow sense of that term. The potential for danger
remains great even if its probability is low.
b. Those where a person places a thing which is not dangerous in itself, in a dangerous position
-includes cases where objects are placed in such a way that other people’s right of way is not
recognized
-also includes cases where objects are placed in an unstable position where the application of
small force will permit the release of some greater force
c. Those involving products and other things which are dangerous because they are defective
-The thing itself is not supposed to be dangerous but it was negligently or erroneously produced
or constructed.

Efficient Intervening Cause

-novus actus interviens

-“An efficient intervening cause is one that destroys the causal connection between the negligent act and injury and
thereby negatives liability.” (Morril vs. Morril, 60 ALR 102, 104 NJL 557)

-There is no efficient intervening cause if the force created by the negligent act or omission have either:

(1) remained active itself;or

(2) created another force which remained active until it directly caused the result; or

(3) created a new active risk of being acted upon by the active force that caused the result.

“The test of the sufficiency of an intervening cause to defeat recovery for negligence is not to be found in the mere
fact of its existence, but rather in its nature and manner in which it affects the continuity of operation of the
primary cause or the connection between it and the injury.” (J. Oneal Sandel vs. State of South Carolina, 13 ALR
1268, 115 SC 168, 104 SE 567 [1920])
-A cause is not an intervening cause if it is already in operation at the time the negligent act is committed.

-In McKee vs. Intermediate Appellate Court (211 SCRA 517 [1992]), the SC held that the efficient intervening cause
may be the negligence of the defendant. The plaintiff may be negligent but the defendant’s negligence pre-empted
the effect of such negligence.

Forceeable Intervening Cause

-cannot be considered sufficient intervening causes

Case application: Phoenix Construction vs. Court of Appeals)

“…Foreseeable Intervening Causes. If the intervening cause is one which in ordinary human experience is
reasonably to be anticipated, or one which the defendant has reason to anticipate under the particular
circumstances, the defendant may be negligent, among other reasons, because of failure to guard against it; or the
defendant may be negligent only for that reason.”

a. Medical Treatment as Intervening Cause

- Tortfeasor is liable for the consequence of negligence, mistake, or lack of skill of a physician or surgeon
whose treatment aggravated the original injury. The rule is based on the reasoning that the additional harm is either:

(1) a part of the original injury,

(2) the natural and probable consequences of the tortfeasor’s original negligence or

(3) the normal incidence of medical care necessitated by the tortfeasor’s original negligence.

Unforeseen and Unexpected Act or Cause

-An unforseen and unexpected act of a third person may not therefore be considered efficient intervening cause if
it is duplicative in nature or if it merely aggravated the injury that resulted because of a prior cause. The same
conclusion can be reached if the third person’s act is part of the causal set, together with defendant’s negligence,
that operated to cause the injury.