For those who care:

You’ll find, at the link, the PDF version of the (revised version) of the PowerPoint slides I used, last month, as part of a lecture titled “A Plea For Coherence: Making Sense of Factual Cause”  I gave in Vancouver on May 5, 2017 at UBC’s law school.

Cheifetz-Factual-Cause-May 2017 revised June 2017- reduced size

The subject shouldn’t surprise some of you:  the incoherent state of proof of the jurisprudence on proof factual causation in negligence in Canada.

I have specifically not dealt with the issue of the use of statistical evidence. That is yet another area within the Canadian jurisprudence that needs a Stygian Stables level clean-up.

The “never say never” in the title of this posting refers to the likelihood that, unless there’s a radical change in my foreseeable future, this is last time I’ll write anything focused on the state of the Canadian jurisprudence on this subject.

I am not aware of any reason to expect – meaning any cases in respect of which leave has been granted where the issues ought to be considered – that the Supreme Court will do anything to clarify the various problems in the foreseeable future.

Perhaps this means that what is needed is for some inventive counsel to convince an appellate court to misuse an SCC decision, as plaintiff’s counsel did with Walker Estate in Resurfice; or, for a trial judge or appellate court to accept, as I point out in the paper, that the SCC jurisprudence requires the conclusion that, in Canadian negligence law, events may occur without having causes (and not just in Stoner, B.C.).

I began the published process of attempting to make sense of the Canadian jurisprudence in an article where the subtitle was “The Hunting of the Causative Snark”. Some of you will know that I completed the process about a decade later in an article which might as well have had the subtitle: “The Snark Is A Boojum”.

If you wish, imagine that my May 2017 piece has the subtitle: “Understanding Original Canadian Jabberwocky”.

I’d have used “Original Canadian Gibberish” but Mel Brooks is still alive to complain that “Blazing Saddles” is too good for that association. I’d have to agree.  On the other hand, Lewis Carroll is not alive to complain although he’d be right, too, if he could and did.

DC