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Tort law is broken into two major components: Unintentional torts, like accidents; and intentional torts, including crimes like battery and murder. The first event in this sequence was an accident; an on-field injury during a game. The first event positioned Taylor at home, where he might not otherwise have been, for the second event two weeks later. The second event was an intentional tort. A simple direct-cause analysis would argue that if it were not for the first event, the second event could not have happened. But as we saw in the definitions, and as we’ll see in the following case, the doctrine of proximate (legal) cause is more complex than a simple “but-for” analysis. It must have been foreseeable, at the time of the game injury, that Taylor’s recuperation would lead to his being shot two weeks later. The nexus between the two events is far too attenuated to make this argument. Nevertheless, the series of events helps illustrate the doctrine of proximate cause.

New York’s Jamaica Station was a busy place in the summer of 1924. Passengers bound for Rockaway Beach stood back on the platform while passengers bound for a different destination scrambled to board their train. Three men carrying packages ran to board this train as it began to pull out of the station. One of the men began to lose his balance. To prevent his fall, an agent aboard the train grabbed the man and pulled him aboard while simultaneously another agent, on the platform, pushed him onto the train. During all this, the small package being carried by the man dislodged and fell onto the rails below. When it hit the rails, it exploded. It turns out, the nondescript package contained fireworks. A woman waiting for the Rockaway Beach train stood on the platform many feet away. The concussion from the explosion caused scales on the platform to fall onto her, injuring her. Helen Palsgraf sued the Long Island Railroad Company to recover for her injuries. The case was ultimately decided by New York’s Court of Appeals on May 29, 1928. Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad, 1928 248 NY 339.

Writing for the majority, Judge Benjamin Cardozo narrowed the class of plaintiffs who could recover for injuries suffered from negligence to those to whom the risk was foreseeable. Cardozo wrote: The conduct of the defendant's guard, if a wrong in its relation to the holder of the package, was not a wrong in its relation to the plaintiff, standing far away. Relatively to her it was not negligence at all. Nothing in the situation gave notice that the falling package had in it the potency of peril to persons thus removed. Id. at 341.

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