PALSGRAF V. LONG ISLAND RAILROAD COMPANY

PALSGRAF V. LONG ISLAND RAILROAD COMPANY, 248 NY 339, 162 N.E. 99 (1928), is one of the most debated tort cases of the twentieth century. The case began in 1927 with an incident at a Long Island Railroad (LIRR) loading platform. Seeing a man running to catch a departing train, two railroad guards reached down to lift him up. In the process, the man dropped a package containing fireworks, which exploded. Either the explosion or an ensuing rush of people at the platform knocked over a nearby scale, injuring Helen Palsgraf.

Palsgraf won $6,000 in a suit against the LIRR. The case went through three appeals, finally ending up in the New York Court of Appeals. Chief Justice Benjamin Cardozo (a future U.S. Supreme Court justice) wrote a majority opinion that reversed the original court decision. Cardozo argued that negligence is a matter of "relation." He said that the LIRR guards may have been negligent toward the man they helped aboard by not foreseeing injury to him or his package, but they were not negligent toward Palsgraf because she stood too far away in relation to the initial incident.

Justice William Andrews wrote a dissenting opinion, arguing that Palsgraf was closely related to the incident. Had there been no explosion, Palsgraf would not have been injured. Andrews argued that justices should consider a wider base of liability when considering tort cases.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

White, G. Edward. Tort Law in America: An Intellectual History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.

R. StevenJones