Proximate cause is the legal limit on how far responsibility for a careless act reaches. It asks whether the injury was close enough to the conduct, and foreseeable enough, that the law should hold the person responsible. It’s a separate question from whether the act simply helped bring the injury about.
Two statutes frame it for damages. O.C.G.A. § 51-12-8 says damage is too remote if it is “only the imaginary or possible result of a tortious act” or if other contingent circumstances mainly caused it. Section 51-12-9 adds that damages that are “the legal and natural result of the act done,” even if contingent to some extent, aren’t too remote.
An intervening act is a contested point. If another person’s independent wrongful act comes between the defendant’s conduct and the injury, the first actor may be cut off, unless that later act was a foreseeable result of what the first actor did. A driver who leaves a car blocking a dark lane may still be responsible when another motorist hits it, because that is the sort of event the blocked lane makes likely.
Proximate cause is normally for the jury, and courts decide it only in plain cases. Other statutes change the framing. In a product case, § 51-1-11(b)(1) requires that the condition of the product when sold be “the proximate cause” of the injury. In malpractice, Zwiren v. Thompson (2003) requires an expert to tie the departure to the injury as a reasonable degree of medical probability. Georgia also assigns percentages of fault under § 51-12-33, so more than one proximate cause can share an injury.
General information about Georgia law as of November 2026. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship.