Law Commons^™

Causal Comparisons, Robert N. Strassfeld

Faculty Publications

Focusing on the multiple meanings of the statement "A was a more important cause of C than was B," Professor Strassfeld considers the feasibility of comparative causation as a means of apportioning legal responsibility for harms He concludes that by combining two different interpretations of "more important cause"--judgments of comparative counterfactual similarity and the Uniform Comparative Fault Act approach of comparative responsibility-we can effectively make causal comparisons and avoid the effort to compare such incommensurables as the defendant's fault under a strict liability standard and the plain- tiff's fault for failure to exercise reasonable care