ABSTRACT
The rules of causation cannot however be looked at in isolation since they tend to function at a range of different levels. First, certain causal rules are to be found at the level of actionability: a cause of action may well be dependent upon the way the damage has occurred and if it arrives in a manner not envisaged by the action itself there may simply be no breach of obligation. For example, liability is incurred in the tort of trespass only if the defendant has directly caused the claimant’s harm. If the damage is indirect then the defendant may well escape liability, not on the ground that he has not caused the claimant’s harm as such, but on the basis that he is not guilty of trespass.25 Accordingly, the question of actionability and causation can lead to an all-or-nothing approach. In Majfrid,26 the defendants moved the plaintiffs’ barge so as to be able to moor their own and, in its new position, the plaintiffs’ barge was unforeseeably damaged; the defendant was held liable in trespass for all the damage arising. This situation can be compared to that in Harnett v Bond,27 where the plaintiff managed to get leave from a mental hospital in which he had been confined and went to the offices of the Commissioner of Lunacy in order to try to convince them that he was sane. The defendant at the Commissioners came to the opposite conclusion and detained the plaintiff in one of the offices for several hours until a proper examination by a doctor could be carried out. The doctor who examined the plaintiff decided he was insane and the plaintiff was re-confined in mental hospitals for a further nine years until he managed to escape and was found to be perfectly sane. Was the defendant in locking the plaintiff in a room for several hours to be liable for the nine years imprisonment in mental institutions? The House of Lords held that the nine years imprisonment was not something that could be attributed to the defendant’s act since it did not directly result from the act.
