Meanings
- uncountablelawA doctrine of law that, in certain circumstances, an intervening event can break the chain of causation between a person's action and its result, potentially depriving that person of legal liability for the result; such an intervening event.
1 more example
The fact that the bouncer’s act may have been a novus actus interveniens, or an intervening act, is part of the analysis of whether legal causation has been established and whether the appellants should be held legally accountable for the death.... The Manitoba Court of Appeal held that, in order for novus actus interveniens to apply to sever legal causation, the intervening act had to be, in some way, extraordinary or unusual.
2012 May 18, A. Karakatsanis, J., “R. v. Maybin, 2012 SCC 24”, in CanLII, retrieved 21 Sep 2020
Origin
Latin, "new intervening act"
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
novus actus interveniens. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/novus%20actus%20interveniens
“novus actus interveniens.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/novus%20actus%20interveniens. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “novus actus interveniens,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/novus%20actus%20interveniens.
Source: novus actus interveniens on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.