Causa Causans Definition:

The most immediate cause of damages.

In tort law, as Jewitt wrote in Dictionary of English Law:

"Causa causans: the immediate cause; the last link or causation. Not the cause (causa sine qua non) of which the proximate cause is an effect, but the nearest cause of the damage or effect for which relief is being sought."

Ballentine's Law Dictionary defines causa causans as:

 "... the causing cause, the efficient cause."

In Smith Hogg, Justice Wright bemoaned the use of such Latin maxims in the course of judicial proceedings and reluctantly remarked:

"Causa causans ... (means) a cause which causes while causa sine qua non means ... a cause which does not, in the sense material to the particular case, causa, but is merely an incident which precedes in the history of narrative of events, but as a cause in not in at the death and hence is irrelevant."

REFERENCES:

• Ballentine, James, Ballentine's Law Dictionary, 3rd Ed. (Rochester, New York: Lawyers Co-Operative Publishing Company, 1969)
• Cullerne v London Building Society 25 QBD 485 (1890)
• Duhaime, Lloyd, Legal Definition of Causa Sine Qua Non
• Duhaime, Lloyd, Legal Definition of Causation
• Duhaime, Lloyd, Tort & Personal Injury Law
• Smith, Hogg & Co., v Black Sea & Baltic General Insurance 1940 A.C. 997