Newton’s Third Law is, “To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction: or the forces of two bodies on each other are always equal and are directed in opposite directions.”
This law can be equally applied in human relationships (both in the home and work environment) as to anywhere else in physics. I’ll apply it briefly to the work place.
You see, we often feel that due to one person’s cause, it created another’s (negative) effect. However, in truth, it was the impact of the two parties that really created the overall outcome.
This is why it is usually fruitless to establish blame on one party or the other in incidents like these. Change either of the variables (i.e. either party) and the end result would probably never have happened. All we can hope to do is change (remove) the right party so that the same negative outcome doesn’t continue once a new person takes their place.
P.S. Typically, we can see things playing out when we experience the “He Said, She Said” principle. Where one party says that it X happened, and the other party said that Y happened, when really both X and Y happened, and the outcome was Z.