DEFENSES

Defenses

Defenses

Palsgraf is unquestionably the most well known case in American tort law, at smallest as far as solicitors and law students are concerned.

Facts of the case

Helen Palsgraf was standing on a Long Island Rail Road stage in New York City on August 24, 1924, waiting for a train to take her and her two daughters to Rockaway Beach. While she was waiting for her train, another train pulled in, and two passengers came running over the stage to apprehend it. One of the travellers was bearing a bundle under his arm. The train started leaving the stage, and two LIRR employees (one on the train, one on the ground) attempted to help the travellers get on board while the train was moving. As they pulled the travellers up on the train, the package fell to the platform.

The test and the Appeal

The test was held in the New York Supreme Court, which will be familiar to any "Law & alignment" fan as the common test court in New York (they name their enclosures backwards, apparently because of an idea that the smallest court should be "supreme" in the eyes of the persons).

Palsgraf enlisted the help of Matthew timber, a solo practitioner with an agency in the Woolworth Building. He expended $142.45 preparing the case against the Long Island trains, $125 of which went to pay an professional witness, Dr. Graeme Hammond, to testify that Palsgraf had developed traumatic hysteria.

References

Fazzolari v. Portland Sch. Dist., 734 P.2d 1326 (Or. 1987) (en banc) (Linde, J.).

Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R., Co., 162 N.E. 99, 99 (N.Y. 1928).

Peter Benson, The Basis for Excluding Liability for Economic Loss in Tort, in Philosophical Foundations Of Tort LaW 427 (David Owen ed., 1995).

Ernest J. Weinrib, Correlativity, Personality, and the Emerging Consensus on Corrective Justice, 2 theoretical inquiries LAW 249 (2000).

Appendix

The Court of Appeals Decision

On May 19, 1928, the Court of Appeals decided to overturn the Appellate Division's ruling by a 4-3 vote. At the time, judges took turns writing opinions: by happy accident, the judge writing the opinion in Palsgraf was Benjamin Cardozo, one of the most famous jurists in American history.

Cardozo wrote that "negligence is not actionable unless it involves the invasion of a legally protected interest, the violation of a right." Quoting the famous English tort scholar Sir Frederick Pollock, he wrote, "Negligence in the air, so to speak, will not do."

"What the plaintiff must show is ...