In Safeco Ins. Co. of America v. J & D Painting (1993) 17 Cal.App.4th 1199, the defendant negligently caused fire damage to the plaintiff's home. After the insurance company paid him for repairs and loss of use and settled with the defendant, the plaintiff filed a separate complaint alleging the real estate market declined significantly during the five months it took to repair the damage and that his property had depreciated substantially. He sought to recover the loss in value of the house plus the extra mortgage interest payments he had to pay. Safeco rejected the plaintiff's claims as inconsistent with the general rule that the proper measure of damages for negligent damage to real property is the lesser of the "cost of repair or the diminution in value but not both." (Safeco, supra, 17 Cal.App.4th at p. 1202.) The court acknowledged the plaintiff "might be able to show that, but for the defendant's negligence, he would have been able to sell his house earlier for more than he now can obtain." (Safeco, supra, 17 Cal.App.4th at p. 1204.) Nevertheless, it observed "the rule for recovery in tort has never rested solely on 'but for' causation (cause in fact), but has also been based on proximate cause. Thus . . . section 3333 mandates recovery not simply for all detriment caused by defendant's negligence, but for all detriment proximately caused thereby. The wording of the statute is manifestly designed to make the trier of fact focus closely on the issue of proximate cause. A superseding cause utterly unrelated to the defendant's negligence breaks the chain of proximate causation and is a bar to recovery. '"Liability cannot be predicated on a prior and remote cause which merely furnishes the condition or occasion for an injury resulting from an intervening unrelated and efficient cause, even though the injury would not have resulted but for such condition or occasion; . . ."' Although the plaintiff might have sold his house at a high price but for the defendant's negligence, the decline in the market bore no relation whatsoever to the acts of the defendant. The defendant's negligence, if such there was, was merely the condition or occasion for the market decline to affect the plaintiff's house." (Id. at p. 1204.)