CAUSATION

PURPOSE

• Outline the concept of causaton

• Explain the essental purpose and nature of the causaton

enquiry in our law

• Distnguish b/n factual causaton and legal causaton

CONCEPT OF CAUSATION
Crimes may be divided into 2 groups, namely:

• Formally defied crimes: prohibit certain type of conduct irrespectve of the

result of such conduct, e.g. possession of drugs

• Materially defied crimes: prohibit the result of the conduct.

It is not the specifc conduct which is being prohibited but any conduct which
causes a specifc conditon.
For example murder: what is prohibited is the causing of death of another human
being.
Proving causation
If X wounds Y and, while Y is being rushed to hospital in an ambulance,
the ambulance crashes in a tree and Y dies aferwards.
• Who caused Y’s death?
• Suppose Y arrives at the hospital, but the doctor who operates on him
is negligent and Y dies as a result of the surgery (operaton)
performed on him. Is X responsible for Y’s death?
• Upon arrival at the hospital, Y refuses a blood transfusion and dies
from blood loss. Will X stll liable for causing Y’s death?
Proving causation
• Suppose that the post-mortem examinaton reveals that Y actually
died from heart failure because he had a weaker heart and not died
from the gun shot. Will X stll liable for causing Y’s death?

• Afer hearing of Y’s death, his wife dies of heart atack. Y’s children
starve to death once both their parents are dead. Is X responsible for
causing their deaths as well?
Proving causation
In order to determine whether certain conduct has caused a certain
prohibited conditon (e.g. Y’s death), two requirements must be met:
First :one must determine whether the conduct was a factual cause of the
conditon (in other words whether there was a factual causaton)
Secondly: one must determine whether the conduct was also the legal
cause of the conditon (in other words whether there was legal causaton).
Only if the conduct is both the factual and the legal cause of the conditon
can a court accept that there has been a causal link between the conduct
and the conditon
Factual causation
Aims to determine whether X’s conduct is the actual cause of the consequences

In order to determine whether X’s act is a factual cause of Y’s death, the condito
sine qua non formula is applied:
X’s act is a factual cause of the death if X’s act cannot be thought away without
Y’s death disappearing at the same tme.

According to this theory/test: one must ask oneself what would have happeied
if X’s coiduct had iot takei place: would the result nevertheless have ensued?
If answer is NO, then the conduct is the factual cause of the situaton or the
result.
Conditio sine qua non
Condito sine qua non literally means “a conditon (or antecedent)
without which . . . not”; in other words, an antecedent (act or conduct)
without which the prohibited situaton would not have materialised.

Conduct is therefore a condito sine qua non for a situaton if the

conduct cannot be “thought away” without the situaton disappearing
at the same tme.
Application of factual causation
• S V Daniels 1983 (3) SA 275 (A) discussed on pp81-82 by Kemp G
Criminal Law