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:
