ABSTRACT
Most of the causation problems encountered in the private law of actions and obligations involve the remedy of damages. This is because causation is primarily concerned with linking harm and reparation and the most common remedy for repairing damage is damages. Even the declaration cases are usually about the possibility of liability in trespass. Nevertheless, important causal questions can found in non-monetary cases as well. For example, in Redgrave v Hurd,153 the purchaser of a solicitor’s practice sought rescission in equity (Chapter 5 § 3) of the contract of purchase on the ground that the seller had misrepresented the income. The seller insisted that the contract be performed on the ground that the purchaser was the cause of his own loss in not examining the books before agreeing to buy. The Court of Appeal held that the law would infer that the misrepresentation was the cause of the purchaser entering the contract and they granted rescission. In contrast it could be said that the reason why the majority of the Court of Appeal refused an injunction against the cricket club in Miller v Jackson (Chapter 4 § 1(b)) was, in part, because the plaintiffs were the cause of their own mental distress. The plaintiffs ‘must have realised that it was the village cricket ground, and that balls would sometimes be knocked from the wicket into their garden’; and if ‘they did not realise it, they should have done’.154
