Authorization of Torts

Abstract

In English law—and Israel law in this respect follows English law—there is a firm principle that a person who collaborates in the commission of a tort by another is considered as having concurrently caused the tort along with that other, even if his participation is merely indirect—as in influencing the person actually committing the tort by stimulating or strengthening the latter's desire to commit it. This hypothesis, the hypothesis of indirect participation, is related in our law to the principle that liability in torts is not limited to compensation for damages of which a person's act was the sole cause, but it may be imposed if the act was one of the causes. The principle, which is expressed in sec. 64 of the Civil Wrongs Ordinance (New Version), seems to have its roots in the theory of equivalence of conditions. According to this latter theory, but not according to it alone, there is no reason for denying X's liability simply because Y is also liable, or because the causal effect of Y's act or his culpability is likely to be regarded as greater than that of X. Neither is any distinction to be made between direct participation and merely indirect participation, that is to say, between participation in the actual commission of the tort on the one hand and influence on the person actually committing the tort on the other.