Erik S. Knutsen (Queen’s University Faculty of Law) has posted What to Foresee: The Boundaries of Remoteness in Canadian Negligence Law (57 The Advocates’ Quarterly, forthcoming 2027) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Under Canadian negligence law, what does a defendant have to foresee in order to be found liable for a breach of the standard of care which caused a plaintiff some injury? Is it something specific like the actual injury the plaintiff suffered? Or is it something more general, like any sort of personal injury or damage to property? And to what potential must the injury be foreseen—something merely possible or something far more likely to occur? The boundaries of the foreseeability concept are unclear as currently applied at the remoteness or legal causation stage of the negligence analysis. This is a problem. Draw foresight too narrowly and every defendant escapes liability. Draw foresight too generally and the concept becomes meaningless as a gatekeeper on tortious liability. This article will explore the job of the remoteness analysis in Canadian negligence law and, in doing so, attempt to answer the question: what ought a defendant have to foresee to be legally liable in tort?
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