The Classical Law of Tort
Coke's Institutes of the Law, No. 1, Series Editors: Amanda J. Owens & Charles K. Rowley
Causation
Holmes' negligence theory was tested in the seminal American case on causation, Palsgraf v. Long Island R. Co. (1928) The New York case is based on a remarkable chain of events. The plaintiff was standing on the platform of the defendant's railroad. A train stopped at the station, and two men ran to get on board. One man needed assistance and was pushed on to the train by the guards. A package that the man was carrying wrapped in newspaper fell and exploded. Some scales at the end of the platform were dislodged by the blast and hit the plaintiff.
Justice Cardozo discussed how negligence involved the invasion of a legally protected interest or an absence of care. A tortious act occurs when a risk, possible of apprehension, is taken and results in harm. The court held that:
Nothing in the situation gave notice that the falling package had in it the potency of peril to persons thus removed. Negligence is not actionable unless it involves the invasion of a legally protected interest, the violation of a right .... 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.
This holding was the natural development from a stream of case law. For example, the New Jersey case of Tuttle v. Atlantic City R. Co., (1901) concerned a railway company which allowed a freight car to derail and smash across the street. The plaintiff injured herself trying to escape from the oncoming carriage. The court commented:
if a defendant puts a plaintiff under a reasonable apprehension of personal physical injury, a right of action arises to recover for the physical injury and the mental disorder naturally incident to its occurrence.
In order for a plaintiff to recover, there must be an unbroken continuity between the commission of a wrong and the effort to avert its consequences. In 1921, Wagner v. International Ry. Co., a New York case, concerned an injury incurred during a railway accident. One night a passenger fell out of a railway carriage's open door. The plaintiff went to search for his cousin and fell from the track into a ravine. The plaintiff recovered damages for his injuries because he chose to look for his relative immediately, in agitation and with imperfect knowledge of the terrain or his cousin's condition. An example of a break in the chain of causation can be found in the Kentucky case of Watson v. Kentucky & Indiana Bridge & R. Co. (1910). A tank car was derailed and discharged a pool of gasoline. A lighted match was thrown into the gasoline, which sparked an explosion. The court ruled that the defendants were responsible for the explosion unless the match was thrown with malice, (a jury question). The explosion could not have taken place without the railroad's primary negligence in allowing the gasoline to spill. But, if the match was thrown with deliberation, it was a separate act, breaking the chain of causation.
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