Also: Superceding Cause; or a Supervening Cause. [5] Usually intervening causes are actions by a third party or natural occurrence that alter the circumstances of accident. Even if the defendant can be shown to have acted negligently, there will be no liability if some new intervening act breaks the chain of causation between that negligence and the loss or damage sustained by the claimant 1 The term force majeure is a direct French translation of the Latin vis maior , which is part of the South African common law and is dealt with below. There are three varieties of intervening acts. self-sown woodlands of birch, alder, etc., intervening the different estates To occur, fall, or come between, points of time, or events; as, an instant intervened between the flash and the report; nothing intervened (i.e. The courts tend to construe force majeure clauses strictly, which means the event being relied upon, must clearly fall within the terms of the force majeure clause.If there is any ambiguity, the force majeure clause is unlikely to apply. The intervening cause must occur between the defendant’s negligent act and the plaintiff’s injury, and it must have caused injury to the plaintiff. Therefore, there may be arguments available that pandemics are far more serious events that were not intended to be included by the parties. Those taken by third parties those taken by the claimant themselves, and those which are acts of nature. ¶ 53 As an aside, we do not accept the State’s assertion that only gross medical negligence can count as a supervening cause. between the intention and the execution) to prevent the undertaking. Parties who intend to rely on either force majeure clauses or the common law doctrine of supervening impossibility are advised to obtain expert legal advice prior to doing so. A third party’s gross negligence toward, or intentional “maltreatment” of, the victim are two (among other) examples of this kind of supervening, intervening, or superseding cause. Intervening Acts (Or Novus Actus Interveniens) It is also possible for certain events to break the chain of causation between the defendant’s actions and the claimant’s injuries. An intervening cause is a separate action that breaks the direct connection between the actions of the defendant and a loss or injury to another person. 3 synonyms of supervene from the Merriam-Webster Thesaurus, plus 5 related words, definitions, and antonyms. The first part of the analysis is the cause-in-fact analysis, which is a determination of whether the defendant’s actions were a “cause-in-fact” of the injuries. As a result, intervening cause may be used as a legal defense in a civil lawsuit. Like an intervening cause, a superseding cause occurs between the defendant’s action and the plaintiff’s injury, … n. the same as an "intervening cause" or "supervening cause," which is an event which occurs after the initial act leading to an accident and substantially causes the accident. the intervening cause was not foreseeable and that the results which it caused. In a superseding intervening cause action, just as in a regular negligence action, there are two parts to determining legal cause. ; An event which intervenes between the negligent act or omission that causes injury to another and which contributes so substantially to the injury as to vacate, replace and overwhelm the original tort-feasor's actions as a contributing force.. were not foreseeable, then the intervening cause becomes a supervening cause. Breaking the chain (or novus actus interveniens, literally new intervening act) refers in English law to the idea that causal connections are deemed to finish. An intervening act, which is a normal response created by negligence, is not a superseding, intervening cause so as to relieve the original wrongdoer of liability, provided the intervening act could have reasonably been foreseen and the conduct was a substantial factor in … Find another word for supervene. Domagala, 2013 IL 113688, ¶ 39.