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PROXIMATE AND REMOTE DAMAGES Definition & Legal Meaning

Definition & Citations:

Proximate damages are the immediate and direct damages and natural results of the act complained of, and such as are usual and might have been expected. Remote damages are those attributable immediately to an intervening cause, though it forms a link in an unbroken chain of causation, so that the remote damage would not have occurred if its elements had not been set in motion by the original act or event. Henry v. Railroad Co., 50 Cal. 183; Kuhn v. Jewett, 32 N. J. Eq. 649; Pielke v. Railroad Co.. 5 Dak. 444, 41 N. W. 669. The terms “remote damages” and “consequential damages” are not synonymous nor to be used interchangeably; all remote damage is consequential, but it is by no means true that all consequential damage is remote. Eaton v. Railroad Co., 51 N. II. 511, 12 Am. Rep. 147.

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