One of the most famous tort/negligence/proximate cause cases of all time - that any lawyer or law student knows by name - is Palsgraf. I had to cheat and look up the cite: Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co. , 248 N.Y. 339, 162 N.E. 99 (N.Y. 1928.
Without going into specifics (and if I remember correctly), a man carrying a package was running to catch a train, and the worker from the train reached out to give him a hand. The man dropped the package. It contained fireworks. Sparks from the train wheels ignited a firework. It struck a scale on the platform, knocking it over, and a bystander was seriously injured or killed by the falling scale.
Was the railroad liable?
Yeah. That Palsgraf Benjamin Cardozo wrote the opinion. Yeah. *That* Benjamin Cardozo. Should your employee have known that trying to help the man may cause him to drop the package that might contain fireworks that may ignite, which might knock over a scale, which could injure someone?
And now we have this?
The law comes full circle.
And you can even buy a Palsgraf t-shirt for your favorite attorney or law student, in several choices of color, with this design:
It's been a while, but this is one of the key cases you'll have in law school regarding negligence.
I suspect it didn't matter to Mrs. Palsgraf whether it was fireworks or body parts.
Yes or no? Your post is not clear.
Eh. You take your time to craft a post and all of these other smarties are faster with the button. Sorry to over-Palsgraf everybody. There weren’t any Palsgrafian comments when I started writing. But was it foreseeable that somebody would beat me to the punch? Perhaps we should apply the reasoning in Palsgraf . . .
lulz