Question

While Jessica, Ashley, and Bryan are snowboarding, they ignore warning signs indicating that they have left the marked trail and are entering dangerous territory. They become lost, and a rescue effort begins. Climbing the mountain, a snowplow accidentally cuts a nearby town’s main electrical cable. Due to the loss of her electric heat, Ethel, an elderly woman, dies of hypothermia. The boarders’ negligence in ignoring the warning signs is:

Answer 1

A causation in fact.

Step-by-step explanation:

It is important to distinguish proximate cause form causation in fact.

Proximus is a Latin adjective referring to what is the closest. In law, a proximate cause is an act of negligence that directly resulted in one's injuries. In this case, one's actions would be closely related to the consequences suffered by the other, therefore the plaintiff should have been able to guess what his or her actions would lead to.

A causation in fact, on the other hand, represents an act that caused an injury, although it might not be the one particular element that lead inevitably to the consequence (which would then be proximate cause). It can be defined using the But for test: but for the boarders’ negligence in ignoring the warning signs, a snowplow wouldn't have cut the electrical cable and therefore Ethel wouldn't have developed hypothermia and died.

This being said, your example is indisputably a causation in fact.