In answer to an earlier question, allergic reaction to eggs only rarely

results in anaphylaxis.

Here's another question. I'm allergic to tree nuts - if I eat them I get

an anaphylactic reaction. Consequently, I *always* take my adrenaline

auto-injector wherever I go. This is regardless of whether someone has

assured me that there's no nuts in food, because as this case shows, it's

always possible for mistakes to occur.

If this poor man knew he suffered an anaphylactic reaction to eggs, should

he have carried an adrenaline auto-injector with him, even if he thought

that there would not be eggs in the food? In that case, is there an issue

of contributory negligence? It would depend, I suppose, whether the

reasonable person who suffers from anaphylaxis is like me and takes her

adrenaline with her everywhere she goes.

Another question: how effective is the frequent disclaimer on food "may

contain traces of nuts"? I have never come across a more irritating

disclaimer. I'm allergic to tree nuts but not peanuts. I've talked with

other people who are allergic to nuts, and we've agreed that we generally

"risk it" when a product says "may contain traces of nuts" otherwise our

diet would become very limited indeed - just about everything has the

disclaimer, and it seems to mean "it's not our fault if, on a

million-to-one-chance, a peanut accidentally falls in the vanilla

ice-cream mix and gives you an allergic reaction". I've never had a

problem yet...although as I say, I carry my injector with me all the

time...

Katy

> Sorry for biting again, on Richard's last point.

>

> I do not accept that Mackie's view, which I endorse, leads to these

obviously incorrect results.

>

> So, taking just the last example. It would be logically correct to say

that without BOTH the failure to brake AND the nonworkability of the

brakes the harm the plaintiff suffered would ot have occurred, so that

both of them, together, are a cause of the harm suffered. The mistake

(in

> my view) is to think that that means that either individually

constitutes

> a cause of the injury, which they do not as the injury would have

happened

> regardless of either one of them. (The same point holds good in relation

to all the other examples.) So, Mackie's view does not lead to the view

that the nonwrokability of the brake, alone, is a cause.

>

> Mackie, of course, was a philosopher and so that answer, for his

purposes,

> suffices. For us, as lawyers, a different problem arises. Is it a

problem,

> legally, that we canot say as a matter of logic at the time of tral as

against either the mechanic or the driver individually that their

negligence was a cause of the harm suffered as we know that the harm

would

> have been suffered anyway, because of the negligence of the other

person?

>

> Not at all. The correct question is to ask whether the defendant has

wronged the plaintiff. Whether D has committed a wrong vis a vis P is

wholly unaffected by whether someone else has committed a wrong, or

would

> have committed a wrong if D had not. In this case, what potentially made

the mechanic's conduct a breach of a duty owed to the plaintff (failure

of

> the brakes) never occurred, whilst the opposite is true of the driver.

Put

> another way, it simply does not matter as a matter of law that the

injury

> would have happened anyway. If I punch you on the nose I am a wrongdoer

and it doesn't matter that someone else does too, or would have done if

I

> had not.

>

> So, if two people set fire to my house both are wrongdoers, and both are

also jointly liable for any consequential loss. If a loss would not have

been suffered but for the comission of one or more wrongs, each

wrongdoer

> is (jointly) liable for this loss, even if the loss would have been

suffered because of the wrong of someone else. This is a rule of law,

and

> lawyers have virtually nothing of interest to say to philosophers about

what 'causation' means.

>

> For me, if you think your legal analysis requires you to argue that X

can

> cause Y even where Y would have happened regardless of X, something must

have gone wrong with the legal analysis.

>

> best

> Rob

>

>> Regarding the latter (on which I have written a lot), i will only say

> here

>> that Mackie's aggregation approach to finding but-for causation is

> almost

>> universally considered unacceptable.  Among other things, it would lead

> to

>> treating the preempted poisoning as well as the preemptive shooting as

> causes of the victim's death in the shooting of poisoned person

>> hypothetical, to the strange conclusion that the aggregate fire was a

> cause (contributed) although neither fire individually was, and to

treating both the failure to brake and the nonworkability of the brakes

as

>> causes (exactly opposite to Rob's conclusion) in the braking

> hypothetical.

>

>

>

>

>

>

>