Practice question
A negligently defective railing gives way during ordinary expected use. A person falls and is injured when landing. The evidence establishes that the defect caused the collapse and continuous fall. The defendant identifies gravity as the only immediate mechanism and denies the relevance of maintenance. Which is correct?
- Mentioning gravity necessarily defeats every negligence claim.
- The person’s landing is always an efficient independent cause.
- Only the most recent molecular movement matters.
- The railing negligence may be legally proximate through the established collapse-and-fall sequence; the final mechanism does not alone displace it.
- The maintenance issue becomes irrelevant because the injury was not instantaneous.
Legal references
- https://lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra1949/ra_386_1949.html — Civil Code, article2176.
- https://lawphil.net/judjuris/juri2017/mar2017/gr_164749_2017.html — Abrogar v Cosmos Bottling, GR 164749, March 15 2017, main opinion: temporal proximity and natural causal chain.
- https://lawphil.net/judjuris/juri2023/jun2023/gr_254395_2023.html — Davao del Norte Electric Cooperative v Heirs of Lucas, GR 254395, June 14 2023, main opinion: earlier operative negligence despite later events.
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