Also known as: natural & probable · natural and probable consequences · foreseeability · proximate cause
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A consequence that follows in the ordinary course from particular conduct.
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Nancy Nelson buys a defective appliance from Neptune Energy in State X. The appliance reaches State Y when a consumer carries it there. Neptune Energy faces no personal jurisdiction in State Y because the travel alone does not show purposeful availment of that market.
Nigel Nelson's minor son takes the family car without permission and causes an accident. Nigel faces no vicarious liability because the parent-child relationship alone does not make the son's conduct a natural and probable result of any parental act.
Nora Nash challenges a handgun ban after keeping a pistol for self-defense at home. The restriction is measured against historical understandings of the right to keep and bear arms rather than modern policy views on probable outcomes.
Nicole Navarro is tried for an alleged assault. The court permits the jury to infer that acts of a person of sound mind are the product of will and produce their natural and probable consequences without shifting any burden to the defense.
Nathaniel Newman is convicted after the jury receives an instruction that a person is presumed to intend the natural and probable consequences of his acts. The instruction is examined to determine whether it creates an unconstitutional mandatory presumption on the element of intent.
Nia Nkosi receives nonpublic information and trades on it. The court considers whether the trading and resulting market effects are the natural and probable consequence of the breach of duty in evaluating liability under the misappropriation theory.
A defendant is responsible for all results that occur as a natural and probable consequence of his conduct even if the precise manner was not anticipated. The chain is broken only by a superseding factor.
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An instruction stating that a person of sound mind is presumed to intend the natural and probable consequences of his acts creates an unconstitutional mandatory presumption if a reasonable juror could understand it as shifting the burden to disprove intent.
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The phrase appears most often in criminal causation and intent instructions but the underlying idea of ordinary consequences also surfaces in civil contexts such as tort proximate cause analysis.
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…to interpret the will of the legislator, is by exploring his intentions at the time when the law was made, by signs the most natural and probable,” Blackstone explained that “[i]f words happen to be still dubious, we may establish their meaning from the context; with which it may be of singular use to compare a word, or a sentence,…