Generally speaking, when another person's actions injure you, that person can be compelled to compensate you via a personal injury lawsuit. However, the law recognizes that there are times when people are not to blame for their actions. For this reason, courts recognize defenses that basically absolve people of responsibility for the damage they cause. One of the most common defenses is called the Act of God defense. What is the Act of God defense?

Answer: The Act of God defense allows defendants to avoid responsibility for the damage caused by forces outside their control, such as a natural disaster like a tornado, flood, or other unforeseeable calamity.

In this article, we'll discuss what the Act of God defense is, how it works, and most importantly, how it can impact your case.

What is an Act of God?

When used in the legal context, the phrase Act of God refers to 1) a violence occurring in nature that 2) has nothing to do with human action and 3) could have never been reasonably foreseen. If said natural violence caused your injuries, then no one can be held financially liable. This may seem so blatantly obvious that there wouldn't need to be a formal defense on the books. Think about it for a second. Suppose you're driving down the road when out of a nowhere a tornado picks up the car next to you and pushes it into your vehicle. Yes, the other driver technically hit you, but it wasn't through any action on their part. Believe it or not, there are people out there who will try to pursue a lawsuit in this scenario.

Should this happen, the other driver could argue to a jury that it wasn't their actions that resulted in your injuries, but the tornado. They would employ the Act of God defense and likely end up owing nothing.

How Does the Act of God Defense Work, in Theory?

As a general principle, American courts do not hold people accountable for harm that wasn't foreseeable. To put it another way, at the time of the incident, the person who caused another person's injury has to have some ability to tell that their behavior could potentially harm someone. For instance, if I'm driving 150mph on the George Bush Tollway, rear-end a slower car, and injure the occupants of that car, it's obvious that one of the consequences of doing 150mph that I should have considered before driving that fast was that I might cause an accident and injure someone. On there other hand, sometimes we hurt people through no fault of our own.

Here is example of when the Act of God defense would likely apply:

• You're on a Greyhound bus that is not well maintained (e.g., its brakes are worn), and its driver is speeding. A magnitude 7.0 earthquake erupts and causes the bus to turn over, hurting you. Greyhound should have maintained better brakes and not hired a speedy driver—you've got them dead to rights that they've behaved negligently. However, an earthquake that size was plainly the cause of the accident and wasn't remotely foreseeable. Greyhound will likely escape any liability.

The Act of God defense is fundamentally fair in theory. It wouldn't be right to make people pay for an injury they had no control over causing. Now, let's talk about how this defense can be abused.

How Does the Act of God Defense Work in Practice?

Unfortunately, this is an important subject to cover, and its application is apparently not as obvious as one might think. However, if you're thinking that we must go over this subject because plaintiffs are arbitrarily trying to sue people for Acts of God, think again. The real issue is that defense attorneys routinely dress up plain old acts of negligence in an attempt to help their reckless clients avoid paying for the harm they've caused.

This is where things get tricky. Generally, courts will allow a jury (if requested by the defendant) to consider whether the defendant's negligence—if there was any—was superseded by the violence of nature. Some examples of how the Act of God defense is misused are as follows:

• A power company places power lines near a store you frequent. Over the years, rain has caused the untreated wood poles to soften. One night as you're walking near the store, a large gust of wind knocks the a pole onto the ground, injuring you. The power company could argue that, look, the rain is natural and the wind is a violent force that they obviously couldn't control. Nonetheless, your lawyer should argue that power companies know or should know that years of rain can compromise the integrity of wood AND that gusts of wind happen all the time. Your lawyer would not be arguing that nature didn't play its part, but that the company should have foreseen the danger and acted accordingly. In this situation, if your case is properly argued, the Act of God defense would likely not hold up.

As previously mentioned, there are very few attorneys out there filing lawsuits when a genuine Act of God causes a person's injuries. At the same time, there are also few defense attorneys who invoke the Act of God defense in crashes that occur in broad daylight on clear days. However, in pretty much any case where the weather is less than ideal, a defense attorney is likely to attempt to argue the Act of God defense. That means if it was raining at the time of the crash, foggy, or even if there was really bad sun glare early in the morning, a defense attorney is likely to raise the issue.

This defense is often argued when it has very little chance at success because it's a "freebie" defense, or in other words, it doesn't hurt the defense to try to make the argument. If it works it defeats the case. If it doesn't, the defendant is no worse off than they were before they raised the issue. With a reward that high, defense attorneys will employ the Act of God defense even on the thinnest pretense.

Grossman Law Offices has experience rebutting specious Act of God defenses

At the end of the day, the Act of God defense is generally to be taken seriously, but not feared. Think of it another way, personal injury attorneys (those as Grossman Law Offices, too) only get paid if they make money for the client by winning the case. If an Act of God is truly to blame for a client's injury, it doesn't make sense to start the case in the first place. An honest attorney will let you know over the phone.

At the same time, we've had decades of rebutting ridiculously Act of God defenses. Part of our success comes from knowing it's one of those arguments defense attorneys employ to torpedo your case, and the other part is that we already do an Act of God defense analysis before we even start a case. There's enough actionable cases out there that we don't need to push cases that the law says don't fly.

At the end of the day, if you've been injured or lost a loved one in an accident, please reach out to us and we'd be happy to discuss your options in a no-cost/no-obligation consultation.