One of the first cases law students learn in torts is Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad, a 1928 case out of the New York Court of Appeals. In addition to being famous for helping set the standard for negligence and liability in American personal injury law, it is an entertaining read. Benjamin Cardozo is one of the more poetic judges in American history, if occasionally a bit wordy and incomprehensible for modern readers. The case has served as a notable introduction to tort law for generations of law students.
Holding: In order to recover monetary damages, an injury victim is limited to recovering only damages that were foreseeable by the negligent actor.
For example, if you are driving drunk, speeding, and texting on your phone, it wouldn't be surprising if you ended up hurting someone — and the law says you should be held accountable. But what about if you are eating in a restaurant, sneeze when putting pepper on your salad, and in doing so throw out your arm, hit a fire alarm, and the resulting stampede injures someone? It's not at all clear that you could have foreseen all of this when you reached for the pepper shaker. Should you be liable then?
In attempting to answer this question based on a similar set of facts, Judge Cardozo enumerated the foreseeability doctrine. He famously wrote, "[p]roof of negligence in the air, so to speak, will not do." While courts have been expanding and refining negligence and liability in personal injury cases since the case was decided, the foreseeability doctrine remains a bedrock of American tort law, and Palsgraf a case that every law student should read.
Facts of the Case
Imagine a bustling station in 1920s New York, with a lot of noise and activity. Helen Palsgraf was waiting on a railroad station platform in New York City with her daughters. Two men were late boarding a train. While the first man was able to jump on board, the second appeared to lose his footing. A guard on the train reached out to grab ahold of him, while a second guard on the station platform pushed the man from behind to get him on the train. In doing so, an unmarked package slipped onto the tracks below. Unbeknownst to the guards, this package contained fireworks, which exploded on contact with the train tracks. The shock waves then dislodged some tile on the roof of the station, which fell and struck Helen Palsgraf.
Palsgraf sued the Long Island Railroad Company (the man carrying fireworks didn't have enough money to be worth suing) and alleged that the guards were negligent in pushing the man and causing her injury. Both the trial court and the New York Supreme Court held that Palsgraf could move forward with her claim (i.e., she met the elements of a tort). It's important to note here that in New York, unlike other states, the Court of Appeals is the highest state court. Ultimately, the New York Court of Appeals reversed both lower courts based on Cardozo's analysis of tort law.
Elements of a Tort
To fully understand Cardozo's opinion, it helps to put the facts in the context of personal injury claims. The elements of a personal injury claim are:
- Duty: The defendant must have had some sort of duty to act in a careful way or act in a way that a reasonable person in the same situation would act.
- Breach of Duty: The defendant did not meet this duty.
- Cause in Fact: If it weren't for the act, the plaintiff (the person suing) would not have been injured.
- Proximate Cause: The injury or damage was a foreseeable result of the act.
- Damages: An actual injury or damage to property occurred.
This is an oversimplification, of course, and exceptions exist, but generally, if an injury victim can meet these elements, they should have a case they can bring before a jury.
Cardozo and the Duty of Care
Palsgraf is famous because of the majority opinion's definition and analysis of the duty of care in personal injury cases, including what it means to be negligent. The law is full of ambiguous terms, and "negligence" is a prime example. What does it mean to act negligently? Merriam-Webster defines negligence in part as "the quality or state of being negligent," a circular definition if there ever was one. And importantly for this case, does simply being negligent in any way mean that you are liable for any and all injuries around you?
The New York Court of Appeals was tasked with defining just what it meant to be liable for negligent acts. Cardozo began with the first element of a personal injury claim, the duty of care. The full relevant paragraph from Palsgraf is quoted below. Note that while the text below is separated out to help law students and readers understand the archaic language, Cardozo wrote the paragraph mostly using a classic "IRAC" style of legal writing (introduction, rule, application, conclusion). Here is what Cardozo wrote (with many citations excluded):
Introduction: "The conduct of the defendant's guard, if a wrong in its relation to the holder of the package, was not a wrong in its relation to the plaintiff, standing far away . . . "
Rule of law: "Negligence is not actionable unless it involves the invasion of a legally protected interest, the violation of a right. "Proof of negligence in the air, so to speak, will not do" (Pollock, Torts [11th ed.], p. 455 . . . "Negligence is the absence of care, according to the circumstances" (WILLES, J., in Vaughan v. Taff Vale Ry. Co., 5 H. & N. 679, 688 . . . "
Application: "The plaintiff as she stood upon the platform of the station might claim to be protected against intentional invasion of her bodily security. Such invasion is not charged. She might claim to be protected against unintentional invasion by conduct involving in the thought of reasonable men an unreasonable hazard that such invasion would ensue. These, from the point of view of the law, were the bounds of her immunity, with perhaps some rare exceptions, survivals for the most part of ancient forms of liability, where conduct is held to be at the peril of the actor (Sullivan v. Dunham, 161 N. Y. 290)."
Conclusion: "If no hazard was apparent to the eye of ordinary vigilance, an act innocent and harmless, at least to outward seeming, with reference to her, did not take to itself the quality of a tort because it happened to be a wrong, though apparently not one involving the risk of bodily insecurity, with reference to some one else . . . The plaintiff sues in her own right for a wrong personal to her, and not as the vicarious beneficiary of a breach of duty to another."
Cardozo's holding is that a negligent act, by itself, is not a "wrong" that can lead to an actionable legal claim. Instead, Cardozo is saying, the key question is whether the act was negligent considering the circumstances and foreseeability of the act. For example, Palsgraf may have had a legal claim if the guard ran to help the man and, in doing so, pushed Palsgraf onto the tracks — it's reasonable to think heedlessly barging into people on a train platform can lead to an injury. And her "bodily security" would have been breached. But those aren't the facts. Instead, the guards invaded the "bodily security" of the man holding the fireworks. He may have had a claim had he been injured, since the guards may have acted negligently toward him. But that's not what Palsgraf claimed. Under these facts, the guards didn't know they were putting Palsgraf at risk. As such, the guards did not owe her a duty of care that they breached, and Palsgraf could not recover damages.
As Cardozo wrote later in his opinion, "[t]he orbit of the danger as disclosed to the eye of reasonable vigilance would be the orbit of the duty." In other words, a person has a duty to guard against reasonably foreseeable danger, but no more than that.
Cardozo then concludes that because the accident was not foreseeable, the guards did not owe Palsgraf a duty of care that they breached, and thus she did not meet the first two elements of a personal injury claim.
Railroad to the Danger Zone
It is not just Cardozo's methodical analysis and lofty writing in the majority opinion that is famous, however. The dissent, written by Judge William Andrews, has also played a significant role in shaping the way courts analyze proximate cause.
In Palsgraf, Judge Andrews was less concerned with a foreseeable duty to others than with what was the proximate cause of the injuries. Andrews wrote that "[i]n an empty world negligence would not exist. It does involve a relationship between man and his fellows, but not merely a relationship between man and those whom he might reasonably expect his act would injure; rather, a relationship between him and those whom he does in fact injure."
Later, Andrews writes that "[n]ot only is he wronged to whom harm might reasonably be expected to result, but he also who is in fact injured, even if he be outside what would generally be thought the danger zone."
Essentially, Andrews asks if there was a clear chain of events from the triggering act to the injury. In Palsgraf, he did find such a proximate cause of injury, and therefore he would have let the case go before a jury to determine whether the guards should have reasonably foreseen the danger.
Palsgraf's Impact on Personal Injury Cases Today
Palsgraf remains relevant today, and not just for historical reasons. In personal injury cases to this day, defendants are incentivized to show there was no duty of care — that they acted reasonably based on the situation and thus any injuries were unforeseeable. This is particularly tempting for defendants because they only need to prove this to a judge and can avoid the cost and length of a jury trial.
Meanwhile, plaintiff's attorneys still focus on proximate cause in situations where their clients were injured in a somewhat surprising way. This is because, despite the fact Andrews' views were the dissent and therefore did not have the force of law, it has remained an influential analysis of proximate cause. If a plaintiff's attorney can show proximate cause, they can often get their clients before a jury to make their case.