Conclusion.
Millennia intervene between the death
of a boy accidentally impaled
on a javelin hurled by
Olympic games athletes in ancient Greece and a mod-
ern spectator struck on the head by a flying
puck in
a hockey arena. But the determination of legal causa-
tion is still as difficult in either
case. Today the specta-
tor at the hockey game
is said to have “legally” caused
his own harm by
“voluntary assumption of the risk.”
The Greeks said
the boy caused his own death by
running upon the javelin.
Modern doctrine attempts to ease the burden of the
individual human being
immediately or directly caus-
ing injury by
shifting loss on those more able to pay
or more likely to be able to pass
the loss on by in-
surance and thence
ultimately to the consuming public
in the form of higher prices.
Thus we see that while physical causation is still
thought to be basic, it
is the notion of purposive causa-
tion, and of
legal policy (the law's purposes) that mod-
ern
lawyers think of when the idea of legal causation
comes to mind.
