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Palsgraf Vs Long Island Railroad Summary

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Palsgraf Vs Long Island Railroad Summary
On February 24, 1928 the Court of Appeals of New York first heard the agreement of Helen Palsgraf verses The Long Island Railroad company, appellant. After three long month of hearing both parties argument the majority ruled that the railroad is not liable for Palsgraf’s injuries because the injuries were not a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the railroads negligence’s. The opposing side argued that if the duty can be traced back to the wrongful act that it is sufficient enough to establish liability. In my opinion I agree with the majority decision that even thought the workers of the Long Island Railroad did help push the man with the package onto the train, they had to way of physically knowing that the package was dangerous and going …show more content…
Proximate cause or the legal cause is “a defendant’s breach of duty is the legal cause of a harm if it was reasonably foreseeable and substantial factor in producing harm, without too many intervening causes.” The purpose of the proximate cause is to find the primary cause within foreseeable reason. Cardozo did not think the case had proximate cause because the workers could not have reasonably foreseen that the package was loaded with explosives. Andrews saw it differently in that the accident could not have happen without the worker pushing the man then causing the accident. He argued that there was proximate cause because there were too many intervening causes in the case that so there was negligence of the worker pulling the man on the train caused the injury so the action had to be in place for the injury to be foreseen. In tort law this is a groundbreaking case in our nations history. It helped launch an idea of proximate case. This new meaning would consider that a defendant is only liable the harm if it is reasonably foreseeable. Proximate cause is now has a boundary on the range of tort liability. I believe that the majority opinion is stronger because of their argument for proximate cause. If the box did not have explosives in it the accident would not have occurred so there was no way the workers could have foreseen the explosion because they thought it was a normal

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