Liability for toxic injury requires proving exposure preceded the harm.

Evidence

The case could not go forward, Keating argued, because the jurors had failed to determine when Grace’s chemicals had first contaminated the wells. For Grace to be held liable for causing injury in Woburn, Schlichtmann had to prove that his clients had been exposed to Grace’s chemicals before those injuries had occurred. And he could not do so with this verdict. The only solution, asserted Keating, was to have the judge order a new trial. — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action, 2753

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the legal causation rule: causation requires temporal sequence — exposure before injury — which the jury’s ambiguous verdict failed to establish.
• SEED: An essay angle on how the burden of proving causation in toxic-tort cases systematically disadvantages plaintiffs when contamination dates are uncertain.
• XREF: connects to: Causal proof in Tort cases requires distinctive harms, not just plausible exposure — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1034