One link, Two links, Three links, Four

I have come to the conclusion that 96 hours is really a rather short period of time. Just a few minutes ago, it was Thanksgiving. Now it's 9 days prior to my first law school exam. Am I ready? Not yet. I still need another month or two to digest all of this nonsense. I'm getting closer though. I re-read all the Property and Contracts cases that we've covered in class. I have about 300 pages to go on Torts. Once that's complete, I'll review my outlines a few more times and start taking practice exams. I know all of the general concepts, but I still need to hack away at some old exams to perfect my skills of spotting legal issues. A lot of issues slap you in the face. Others aren't so obvious. It's the additional not-so-obvious issues that we'll need to catch in order to achieve that "A."

One of the topics we covered over the last couple of weeks in Torts was proximate cause. This is causing me headaches. Basically, proximate (or legal) cause is an element of negligence to determine whether or not the law will provide a remedy. The key is to determine when to break the chain of causation. For instance, say I pour gas into my cooler scooter and then light a cigar. After taking a few puffs, the scooter explodes and catches the house on fire. Due to my superhero-like capabilities I avoid harm, grab the beer from the cooler, call the authorities, and run to the street to view the fireworks. It's easy to see that I negligently caused the house fire, but could I foresee the neighbor's house burning as well? Most likely I'll be liable for negligence to the neighbor. Now, what if the next house caught on fire, and the next, and the next, etc.? Where does the causal chain get severed? Should I be responsible for all of the houses? Depending on the facts, the courts will likely break the chain of causation at some point. Some jurisdictions will break the chain after the first house. Some may go further. It also depends on whether people had insurance, etc. Hypotheticals like these will definitely be on the test (minus my creativity of course). Sometimes it's a pain in the neck determining proximate cause.