The element everyone forgets to prove in negligence

A careless act that injures someone is not automatically negligence. Miss one element and the whole claim collapses.

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A railway guard shoves a passenger to help him board. The man drops a package of fireworks; they explode, and scales at the far end of the platform fall and injure Mrs. Palsgraf. She sues in negligence. Careless act, real injury, she wins?

Not so fast. A careless act plus an injury is not negligence. She has to prove four things, and the guard's carelessness only touches one of them.

List the four.

Duty, breach, causation, and damages. Breach is the careless push. Damages, the injury. The case turns on the other two, and duty is where it dies.

⚠ Trap

But surely everyone owes a duty to be careful. Why isn't that automatic?

That's the trap the majority in Palsgraf (1928) refused. Duty runs only to foreseeable plaintiffs in the zone of danger. Cardozo held the guard could not have foreseen that helping a man with a package would harm someone standing yards away, so as to her, no duty ever arose.

Suppose we grant a duty for argument's sake. Does causation save her?

Still no. But-for cause might be met, no push, no explosion, no injury. Proximate cause is the wall: the law won't extend liability to a harm this bizarre and attenuated. The type of harm wasn't a foreseeable result of the act.

So state the principle a grader wants to see.

Carelessness is necessary but never sufficient. Without a duty to this plaintiff and a proximate causal link to this harm, negligence fails, no matter how sloppy the conduct looked.

↑ answer it in your head first ↑

the mistakes this catches

Traps

⚠ Assuming a careless act plus an injury equals liability. Without duty and causation, there is no negligence.
⚠ Treating foreseeability as a matter for the jury only. Palsgraf makes duty a question of the relationship, decided by the court.
⚠ Confusing actual cause ("but-for") with proximate cause. Both must be shown; passing one does not satisfy the other.

test yourself, tap to flip

Flash drills

1 What are the four elements of a negligence claim? tap →

Duty, breach, causation (actual and proximate), and damages. All four must be proven; the absence of any one defeats the claim.

2 What did Palsgraf establish about duty? tap →

A defendant owes a duty only to foreseeable plaintiffs within the zone of danger. If the harm to this plaintiff was unforeseeable, no duty arose and there is no negligence, however careless the act.

3 How does proximate cause differ from actual cause? tap →

Actual cause is but-for causation, the injury would not have happened without the act. Proximate cause limits liability to harms whose type was a foreseeable result, cutting off freak or attenuated consequences.

4 Why can a defendant breach a standard of care and still not be liable? tap →

Because breach is only one element. If the plaintiff was unforeseeable (no duty) or the harm was not proximately caused, the claim fails despite the careless conduct.

⟳ These drills come back on a spaced schedule. Review →

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