Lightning strikes a building, the fire it starts is put out with water, and the water ruins stock in the basement. Under proximate cause reasoning, the water damage is:
Explanation
Proximate cause asks what set in motion an unbroken chain of events leading to the damage, and when a covered peril starts that chain the resulting damage is treated as loss by that peril. Lightning is the proximate cause here, so water used to fight the fire it started is a covered consequence even though water by itself is not a listed peril. Treating the last event in the chain as the cause would defeat most fire claims, since smoke and water do much of the damage.
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