segon Seminari de tort law online Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad PDF

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segon Seminari de tort law online Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad...

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Second online seminar activity Tort Law Group 2

1. Read the famous decision Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad (248 N.Y. 339, 162 N.E. 99 (1928)). It is a leading case, not just in the American law of torts, but also in the current understanding of several relevant issues in all tort law legal systems. The facts of the case, though bizarre, are real. For your convenience, you may find a scanned copy of the decision at the Aula Global. The decision is usually known by the opposite views of Justice Cardozo, who wrote the decision supported by the majority of the court, and Justice Andrews, who wrote the dissenting opinion followed by a minority of the court members. As you will see, the main issues are negligence, causation-in-fact and proximate causation (scope of liability).

2. Summarize the arguments used by Justice Cardozo and Justice Andrews in their respective opinions. I will first start by explaining the arguments made by justice Cardozo. Cardozo’s main explanations argue that the railroad company was not responsible for the damages suffered by Helen Palsgraf because she was not a foreseeable plaintiff since the railroad company owed no duty of care to her (not because of proximate cause issues). The arguments move all around the fact that the guards of the train were clearly negligent to the passengers that carried the fireworks because by their conduct (helping one of them boarding the train) it was foreseeable that something could happen to them (for example losing their package or being injured), but they could not be considered negligent to Helen Palsgraf because, in the same way, it was absolutely unforeseeable that the package that the passengers were hanging could contain explosives that could harm her. This, then, was “outside the range of apprehension” of the guards. Then, argues Cardozo, Helen should have sued the passengers instead of the guards, whose conduct by bringing explosives and taking risks entering a train was negligent in the first place. I think that the way of thinking Cardozo sustains in the case can be summed up by this sentence: "It was not necessary that the defendant should have had notice of the particular method in which an accident would occur, if the possibility of an accident was clear to the ordinarily prudent eye". As it was no clear to the ordinarily prudent eye that the explosion could have happened, no negligence can be attributed to the guards and, consequently, to the railroad company.

On the other side we have Justice Andrews’s dissension. The arguments of justice Andrews are based on the determination of the foreseeability of the facts under the concept of proximate cause. By this, the breaking of a duty element, that makes the actions of the guards negligent in front of the passengers that were trying to enter the train, should be understood in a broadly way to also include all injured victims. In addition, says Justice Andrews, what the court should have done was to determine if there existed a natural and continuous sequence between the cause (pushing the passenger) and the effect (hurting Helen Palsgraf). Of course, it does not exist an objective clear determination of when it can be considered that the breaking of a duty of care still is a substantial factor in producing others, but what Andrews supported is that the jury should have had to determine if Helen Palsgraf was a foreseeable plaintiff, which never happened during the case.

3. To what extent may the proximate causation doctrine be useful for cases like Palsgraf? What makes the proximate causation doctrine useful in this case is that it helps to identify the trace of consequences that a negligent act can produce, and then to determine which of them can be still attributable to it, considering the intervening causes that could happen in between and the likeliness in the usual judgment of things. In the Palsgraf case, proximate causation says that the act of the guard (knocking a random package) was negligent, and for its proximate consequences the guard is liable. Then, it doesn’t matter if the package was broken, if it hurt another person by hitting someone while falling or if it exploded and this explosion directly hurt someone, because the guard was liable by all the possible options that negligently knocking a package could produce, and this is determined by the proximate cause doctrine. 4. Why is foreseeability so relevant in order to assess negligence? Do you think foreseeability has or should have the same importance in areas subject to the strict liability standard? Foreseeability is very important in order to assess negligence because it is necessary for a negligent act that the supposed tortfeasor could have the possibility to figure out that his or her actions could have such results. What law disapproves in in a negligent act is precisely that the tortfeasor acted not with intention of dealing damage but without the proper care that is considered that a standard person should have. Then, so, it is in the very nature of negligence that a person who commits a negligent act has to have the possibility of knowing that his actions can result in a specific key scenario. Foreseeability is by this reason a key element in negligence, because unforeseeable events cannot transform into negligent a conduct that, otherwise, should be non-negligent. However, in strict liability causes, there exists the fact that the conduct carried out is considered inherently dangerous, so the existence of an unforeseeable event does not change a non-negligent event into a negligent event, it just changes the way in which the negligent event could result dangerous. This is in fact a summarize of what Justice Andrews says in his

dissention: the acts of the guards where itself dangerous and disapproved by law, so the results that they provoke must be attributed to them.

5. Why the victim sued the Long Island Railroad Company instead of the employees intervening in the case? Sometimes the person who must compensate the damages suffered by the victim is not the one who caused physically the damage but the one who is considered responsible for the actions of others. This is the case of the parents in front of their child, of the tutors in front of their supervised, of the owners of schools in front of their students and also of the employers in front of their employees. This is done because of three elements: firstly, because we suppose that employers are more solvent than their employees, so it would be easier for the victim to claim for a reparation oh her damage. In a second place because sometimes in can be difficult for a court to identify who were the specific employees who caused the damage. Finally, we consider that making employers responsible for the harm caused by their employees is a clear incentive for controlling them as they ought to. So, in other words, this is a case of vicarious liability.

Please, deliver your answers at the Aula Global before Monday, November 15 at 23:59 h. This is an activity subject to evaluation. All assignments must be written in English. Do not forget to write your name in the document....