In legal matters, the intervening cause comes between one action (or failure to act) and it changes the natural and continuous series of events that follow.  When an intervening cause can be located, because it changes the natural progression of events, it may relieve the initial person who acted of his or her responsibility for an injury that is produced.  In the discussion of or proximate cause, an example was given in which you roll a ball down a hill and it is picked up by a random passerby, who throws it through a window, which breaks and injures other people. The passerby’s action is the proximate cause of the injury. It is also an intervening cause, which relieves you from the responsibility for injury that may have come about due to your act. It “intervenes” between your act and the ultimate consequence.