Business Law

[*339]

Helen Palsgraf, Respondent,

v

The Long Island Railroad Company, Appellant.

Court of Appeals of New York

Argued February 24, 1928

Decided May 29, 1928

248 NY 339

CITE TITLE AS: Palsgraf v Long Is. R.R. Co.

[*340] OPINION OF THE COURT

CARDOZO, Ch. J.

Plaintiff was standing on a platform of defendant's railroad after buying a ticket to go to

Rockaway Beach. A train stopped at the station, bound for another place. Two men ran forward

to catch it. One of the men reached the platform of the car without mishap, though the train was

already moving. The other man, carrying a package, jumped aboard the car, but seemed unsteady

as if about to fall. A guard on the car, who had held the door open, reached forward to

help [*341] him in, and another guard on the platform pushed him from behind. In this act, the

package was dislodged, and fell upon the rails. It was a package of small size, about fifteen

inches long, and was covered by a newspaper. In fact it contained fireworks, but there was

nothing in its appearance to give notice of its contents. The fireworks when they fell exploded.

The shock of the explosion threw down some scales at the other end of the platform, many feet

away. The scales struck the plaintiff, causing injuries for which she sues.

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. Negligence is not actionable unless it involves the

invasion of a legally protected interest, the violation of a right. "Proof of negligence in the air, so

to speak, will not do" (Pollock, Torts [11th ed.], p. 455; Martin v. Herzog, 228 N. Y. 164, 170;

cf. Salmond, Torts [6th ed.], p. 24). "Negligence is the absence of care, according to the

circumstances" (WILLES, J., in Vaughan v. Taff Vale Ry. Co., 5 H. & N. 679, 688; 1 Beven,

Negligence [4th ed.], 7; Paul v. Consol. Fireworks Co., 212 N. Y. 117; Adams v. Bullock, 227 N.

Y. 208, 211; Parrott v. Wells-Fargo Co., 15 Wall. [U. S.] 524). The plaintiff as she stood upon

the platform of the station might claim to be protected against intentional invasion of her bodily

security. Such invasion is not charged. She might claim to be protected against unintentional

invasion by conduct involving in the thought of reasonable men an unreasonable hazard that such

invasion would ensue. These, from the point of view of the law, were the bounds of her

immunity, with perhaps some rare exceptions, survivals for the most part of ancient forms of

liability, where conduct is held to be at the peril of the actor ([*342] Sullivan v. Dunham, 161 N.

Y. 290). If no hazard was apparent to the eye of ordinary vigilance, an act innocent and harmless,

at least to outward seeming, with reference to her, did not take to itself the quality of a tort

because it happened to be a wrong, though apparently not one involving the risk of bodily

insecurity, with reference to some one else. "In every instance, before negligence can be

predicated of a given act, back of the act must be sought and found a duty to the individual

complaining, the observance of which would have averted or avoided the injury" (McSHERRY,

C. J., in W. Va. Central R. Co. v. State, 96 Md. 652, 666; cf. Norfolk & Western Ry. Co. v.

Wood, 99 Va. 156, 158, 159; Hughes v. Boston & Maine R. R. Co., 71 N. H. 279, 284; U. S.

Express Co. v. Everest, 72 Kan. 517; Emry v. Roanoke Nav. Co., 111 N. C. 94, 95; Vaughan v.

Transit Dev. Co., 222 N. Y. 79; Losee v. Clute, 51 N. Y. 494; DiCaprio v. N. Y. C. R. R. Co., 231

N. Y. 94; 1 Shearman & Redfield on Negligence, § 8, and cases cited; Cooley on Torts [3d ed.],

p. 1411; Jaggard on Torts, vol. 2, p. 826; Wharton, Negligence, § 24; Bohlen, Studies in the Law

of Torts, p. 601). "The ideas of negligence and duty are strictly correlative" (BOWEN, L. J.,

in Thomas v. Quartermaine, 18 Q. B. D. 685, 694). The plaintiff sues in her own right for a

wrong personal to her, and not as the vicarious beneficiary of a breach of duty to another.

A different conclusion will involve us, and swiftly too, in a maze of contradictions. A guard

stumbles over a package which has been left upon a platform. It seems to be a bundle of

newspapers. It turns out to be a can of dynamite. To the eye of ordinary vigilance, the bundle is

abandoned waste, which may be kicked or trod on with impunity. Is a passenger at the other end

of the platform protected by the law against the unsuspected hazard concealed beneath the

waste? If not, is the result to be any different, so far as the distant passenger is concerned, when

the guard stumbles over a valise [*343] which a truckman or a porter has left upon the walk? The

passenger far away, if the victim of a wrong at all, has a cause of action, not derivative, but

original and primary. His claim to be protected against invasion of his bodily security is neither

greater nor less because the act resulting in the invasion is a wrong to another far removed. In

this case, the rights that are said to have been violated, the interests said to have been invaded,

are not even of the same order. The man was not injured in his person nor even put in danger.

The purpose of the act, as well as its effect, was to make his person safe. If there was a wrong to

him at all, which may very well be doubted, it was a wrong to a property interest only, the safety

of his package. Out of this wrong to property, which threatened injury to nothing else, there has

passed, we are told, to the plaintiff by derivation or succession a right of action for the invasion

of an interest of another order, the right to bodily security. The diversity of interests emphasizes

the futility of the effort to build the plaintiff's right upon the basis of a wrong to some one else.

The gain is one of emphasis, for a like result would follow if the interests were the same. Even

then, the orbit of the danger as disclosed to the eye of reasonable vigilance would be the orbit of

the duty. One who jostles one's neighbor in a crowd does not invade the rights of others standing

at the outer fringe when the unintended contact casts a bomb upon the ground. The wrongdoer as

to them is the man who carries the bomb, not the one who explodes it without suspicion of the

danger. Life will have to be made over, and human nature transformed, before prevision so

extravagant can be accepted as the norm of conduct, the customary standard to which behavior

must conform.

The argument for the plaintiff is built upon the shifting meanings of such words as "wrong"

and "wrongful," and shares their instability. What the plaintiff must [*344] show is "a wrong" to

herself, i. e., a violation of her own right, and not merely a wrong to some one else, nor conduct

"wrongful" because unsocial, but not "a wrong" to any one. We are told that one who drives at

reckless speed through a crowded city street is guilty of a negligent act and, therefore, of a

wrongful one irrespective of the consequences. Negligent the act is, and wrongful in the sense

that it is unsocial, but wrongful and unsocial in relation to other travelers, only because the eye

of vigilance perceives the risk of damage. If the same act were to be committed on a speedway or

a race course, it would lose its wrongful quality. The risk reasonably to be perceived defines the

duty to be obeyed, and risk imports relation; it is risk to another or to others within the range of

apprehension (Seavey, Negligence, Subjective or Objective, 41 H. L. Rv. 6; Boronkay v.

Robinson & Carpenter, 247 N. Y. 365). This does not mean, of course, that one who launches a

destructive force is always relieved of liability if the force, though known to be destructive,

pursues an unexpected path. "It was not necessary that the defendant should have had notice of

the particular method in which an accident would occur, if the possibility of an accident was

clear to the ordinarily prudent eye" (Munsey v. Webb, 231 U. S. 150, 156; Condran v. Park &

Tilford, 213 N. Y. 341, 345; Robert v. U. S. E. F. Corp., 240 N. Y. 474, 477). Some acts, such as

shooting, are so imminently dangerous to any one who may come within reach of the missile,

however unexpectedly, as to impose a duty of prevision not far from that of an insurer. Even

today, and much oftener in earlier stages of the law, one acts sometimes at one's peril (Jeremiah

Smith, Tort and Absolute Liability, 30 H. L. Rv. 328; Street, Foundations of Legal Liability, vol.

1, pp. 77, 78). Under this head, it may be, fall certain cases of what is known as transferred

intent, an act willfully dangerous to A resulting by misadventure in injury to B (Talmage v.

Smith, 101 Mich. 370, 374) [*345] These cases aside, wrong is defined in terms of the natural or

probable, at least when unintentional (Parrot v. Wells-Fargo Co. [The Nitro-Glycerine Case], 15

Wall. [U. S.] 524). The range of reasonable apprehension is at times a question for the court, and

at times, if varying inferences are possible, a question for the jury. Here, by concession, there

was nothing in the situation to suggest to the most cautious mind that the parcel wrapped in

newspaper would spread wreckage through the station. If the guard had thrown it down

knowingly and willfully, he would not have threatened the plaintiff's safety, so far as

appearances could warn him. His conduct would not have involved, even then, an unreasonable

probability of invasion of her bodily security. Liability can be no greater where the act is

inadvertent.

Negligence, like risk, is thus a term of relation. Negligence in the abstract, apart from things

related, is surely not a tort, if indeed it is understandable at all (BOWEN, L. J., in Thomas v.

Quartermaine, 18 Q. B. D. 685, 694). Negligence is not a tort unless it results in the commission

of a wrong, and the commission of a wrong imports the violation of a right, in this case, we are

told, the right to be protected against interference with one's bodily security. But bodily security

is protected, not against all forms of interference or aggression, but only against some. One who

seeks redress at law does not make out a cause of action by showing without more that there has

been damage to his person. If the harm was not willful, he must show that the act as to him had

possibilities of danger so many and apparent as to entitle him to be protected against the doing of

it though the harm was unintended. Affront to personality is still the keynote of the wrong.

Confirmation of this view will be found in the history and development of the action on the case.

Negligence as a basis of civil liability was unknown to mediaeval law (8 Holdsworth, History of

English Law, p. 449; Street, Foundations of Legal Liability, vol. 1, [*346] pp. 189, 190). For

damage to the person, the sole remedy was trespass, and trespass did not lie in the absence of

aggression, and that direct and personal (Holdsworth, op. cit. p. 453; Street, op. cit. vol. 3, pp.

258, 260, vol. 1, pp. 71, 74.) Liability for other damage, as where a servant without orders from

the master does or omits something to the damage of another, is a plant of later growth

(Holdsworth, op. cit. 450, 457; Wigmore, Responsibility for Tortious Acts, vol. 3, Essays in

Anglo-American Legal History, 520, 523, 526, 533). When it emerged out of the legal soil, it

was thought of as a variant of trespass, an offshoot of the parent stock. This appears in the form

of action, which was known as trespass on the case (Holdsworth, op. cit. p. 449; cf. Scott v.

Shepard, 2 Wm. Black. 892; Green, Rationale of Proximate Cause, p. 19). The victim does not

sue derivatively, or by right of subrogation, to vindicate an interest invaded in the person of

another. Thus to view his cause of action is to ignore the fundamental difference between tort

and crime (Holland, Jurisprudence [12th ed.], p. 328). He sues for breach of a duty owing to

himself.

The law of causation, remote or proximate, is thus foreign to the case before us. The

question of liability is always anterior to the question of the measure of the consequences that go

with liability. If there is no tort to be redressed, there is no occasion to consider what damage

might be recovered if there were a finding of a tort. We may assume, without deciding, that

negligence, not at large or in the abstract, but in relation to the plaintiff, would entail liability for

any and all consequences, however novel or extraordinary (Bird v. St. Paul F. & M. Ins. Co., 224

N. Y. 47, 54; Ehrgott v. Mayor, etc., of N. Y., 96 N. Y. 264; Smith v. London & S. W. Ry. Co., L.

R. 6 C. P. 14; 1 Beven, Negligence, 106; Street, op. cit. vol. 1, p. 90; Green, Rationale of

Proximate Cause, pp. 88, 118; cf. Matter of Polemis, L. R. 1921, 3 K. B. 560; 44 Law Quarterly

Review, 142). There is room for [*347] argument that a distinction is to be drawn according to

the diversity of interests invaded by the act, as where conduct negligent in that it threatens an

insignificant invasion of an interest in property results in an unforseeable invasion of an interest

of another order, as, e. g., one of bodily security. Perhaps other distinctions may be necessary.

We do not go into the question now. The consequences to be followed must first be rooted in a

wrong. The judgment of the Appellate Division and that of the Trial Term should be reversed,

and the complaint dismissed, with costs in all courts.

ANDREWS, J. (dissenting).

Assisting a passenger to board a train, the defendant's servant negligently knocked a

package from his arms. It fell between the platform and the cars. Of its contents the servant knew

and could know nothing. A violent explosion followed. The concussion broke some scales

standing a considerable distance away. In falling they injured the plaintiff, an intending

passenger.

Upon these facts may she recover the damages she has suffered in an action brought against

the master? The result we shall reach depends upon our theory as to the nature of negligence. Is

it a relative concept—the breach of some duty owing to a particular person or to particular

persons? Or where there is an act which unreasonably threatens the safety of others, is the doer

liable for all its proximate consequences, even where they result in injury to one who would

generally be thought to be outside the radius of danger? This is not a mere dispute as to words.

We might not believe that to the average mind the dropping of the bundle would seem to involve

the probability of harm to the plaintiff standing many feet away whatever might be the case as to

the owner or to one so near as to be likely to be struck by its fall. If, however, we adopt the

second hypothesis [*348] we have to inquire only as to the relation between cause and effect. We

deal in terms of proximate cause, not of negligence.

Negligence may be defined roughly as an act or omission which unreasonably does or may

affect the rights of others, or which unreasonably fails to protect oneself from the dangers

resulting from such acts. Here I confine myself to the first branch of the definition. Nor do I

comment on the word "unreasonable." For present purposes it sufficiently describes that average

of conduct that society requires of its members.

There must be both the act or the omission, and the right. It is the act itself, not the intent of

the actor, that is important. (Hover v. Barkhoof, 44 N. Y. 113; Mertz v. Connecticut Co., 217 N.

Y. 475.) In criminal law both the intent and the result are to be considered. Intent again is

material in tort actions, where punitive damages are sought, dependent on actual malice— not on

merely reckless conduct. But here neither insanity nor infancy lessens responsibility. (Williams v.

Hays, 143 N. Y. 442.)

As has been said, except in cases of contributory negligence, there must be rights which are

or may be affected. Often though injury has occurred, no rights of him who suffers have been

touched. A licensee or trespasser upon my land has no claim to affirmative care on my part that

the land be made safe. (Meiers v. Koch Brewery, 229 N. Y. 10.) Where a railroad is required to

fence its tracks against cattle, no man's rights are injured should he wander upon the road

because such fence is absent. (Di Caprio v. N. Y. C. R. R., 231 N. Y. 94.) An unborn child may

not demand immunity from personal harm. (Drobner v. Peters, 232 N. Y. 220.)

But we are told that "there is no negligence unless there is in the particular case a legal duty

to take care, and this duty must be one which is owed to the plaintiff [*349] himself and not

merely to others." (Salmond Torts [6th ed.], 24.) This, I think too narrow a conception. Where

there is the unreasonable act, and some right that may be affected there is negligence whether

damage does or does not result. That is immaterial. Should we drive down Broadway at a

reckless speed, we are negligent whether we strike an approaching car or miss it by an inch. The

act itself is wrongful. It is a wrong not only to those who happen to be within the radius of

danger but to all who might have been there— a wrong to the public at large. Such is the

language of the street. Such the language of the courts when speaking of contributory negligence.

Such again and again their language in speaking of the duty of some defendant and discussing

proximate cause in cases where such a discussion is wholly irrelevant on any other theory. (Perry

v. Rochester Line Co., 219 N. Y. 60.) As was said by Mr. Justice HOLMES many years ago, "the

measure of the defendant's duty in determining whether a wrong has been committed is one

thing, the measure of liability when a wrong has been committed is another." (Spade v. Lynn &

Boston R. R. Co., 172 Mass. 488.) Due care is a duty imposed on each one of us to protect

society from unnecessary danger, not to protect A, B or C alone.

It may well be that there is no such thing as negligence in the abstract. "Proof of negligence

in the air, so to speak, will not do." In an empty world negligence would not exist. It does

involve a relationship between man and his fellows. But not merely a relationship between man

and those whom he might reasonably expect his act would injure. Rather, a relationship between

him and those whom he does in fact injure. If his act has a tendency to harm some one, it harms

him a mile away as surely as it does those on the scene. We now permit children to recover for

the negligent killing of the father. It was never prevented on the theory that no duty was owing to

them. A husband may be compensated for [*350] the loss of his wife's services. To say that the

wrongdoer was negligent as to the husband as well as to the wife is merely an attempt to fit facts

to theory. An insurance company paying a fire loss recovers its payment of the negligent

incendiary. We speak of subrogation—of suing in the right of the insured. Behind the cloud of

words is the fact they hide, that the act, wrongful as to the insured, has also injured the company.

Even if it be true that the fault of father, wife or insured will prevent recovery, it is because we

consider the original negligence not the proximate cause of the injury. (Pollock, Torts [12th ed.],

463.)

In the well-known Polemis Case (1921, 3 K. B. 560), SCRUTTON, L. J., said that the

dropping of a plank was negligent for it might injure "workman or cargo or ship." Because of

either possibility the owner of the vessel was to be made good for his loss. The act being

wrongful the doer was liable for its proximate results. Criticized and explained as this statement

may have been, I think it states the law as it should be and as it is. (Smith v. London &

Southwestern Ry. Co., [1870-71] 6 C. P. 14; Anthony v. Slaid, 52 Mass. 290; Wood v. Penn. R. R.

Co., 177 Penn. St. 306; Trashansky v. Hershkovitz, 239 N. Y. 452.)

The proposition is this. Every one owes to the world at large the duty of refraining from

those acts that may unreasonably threaten the safety of others. Such an act occurs. Not only is he

wronged to whom harm might reasonably be expected to result, but he also who is in fact

injured, even if he be outside what would generally be thought the danger zone. There needs be

duty due the one complaining but this is not a duty to a particular individual because as to him

harm might be expected. Harm to some one being the natural result of the act, not only that one

alone, but all those in fact injured may complain. We have never, I think, held otherwise. Indeed

in the Di Caprio case we said that a breach of a [*351] general ordinance defining the degree of

care to be exercised in one's calling is evidence of negligence as to every one. We did not limit

this statement to those who might be expected to be exposed to danger. Unreasonable risk being

taken, its consequences are not confined to those who might probably be hurt.

If this be so, we do not have a plaintiff suing by "derivation or succession." Her action is

original and primary. Her claim is for a breach of duty to herself—not that she is subrogated to

any right of action of the owner of the parcel or of a passenger standing at the scene of the

explosion.

The right to recover damages rests on additional considerations. The plaintiff's rights must

be injured, and this injury must be caused by the negligence. We build a dam, but are negligent

as to its foundations. Breaking, it injures property down stream. We are not liable if all this

happened because of some reason other than the insecure foundation. But when injuries do result

from our unlawful act we are liable for the consequences. It does not matter that they are

unusual, unexpected, unforeseen and unforseeable. But there is one limitation. The damages

must be so connected with the negligence that the latter may be said to be the proximate cause of

the former.

These two words have never been given an inclusive definition. What is a cause in a legal

sense, still more what is a proximate cause, depend in each case upon many considerations, as

does the existence of negligence itself. Any philosophical doctrine of causation does not help us.

A boy throws a stone into a pond. The ripples spread. The water level rises. The history of that

pond is altered to all eternity. It will be altered by other causes also. Yet it will be forever the

resultant of all causes combined. Each one will have an influence. How great only omniscience

can say. You may speak of a chain, or if you please, a net. An analogy is of little

aid. [*352] Each cause brings about future events. Without each the future would not be the

same. Each is proximate in the sense it is essential. But that is not what we mean by the word.

Nor on the other hand do we mean sole cause. There is no such thing.

Should analogy be thought helpful, however, I prefer that of a stream. The spring, starting

on its journey, is joined by tributary after tributary. The river, reaching the ocean, comes from a

hundred sources. No man may say whence any drop of water is derived. Yet for a time

distinction may be possible. Into the clear creek, brown swamp water flows from the left. Later,

from the right comes water stained by its clay bed. The three may remain for a space, sharply

divided. But at last, inevitably no trace of separation remains. They are so commingled that all

distinction is lost.

As we have said, we cannot trace the effect of an act to the end, if end there is. Again,

however, we may trace it part of the way. A murder at Serajevo may be the necessary antecedent

to an assassination in London twenty years hence. An overturned lantern may burn all Chicago.

We may follow the fire from the shed to the last building. We rightly say the fire started by the

lantern caused its destruction.

A cause, but not the proximate cause. What we do mean by the word "proximate" is, that

because of convenience, of public policy, of a rough sense of justice, the law arbitrarily declines

to trace a series of events beyond a certain point. This is not logic. It is practical politics. Take

our rule as to fires. Sparks from my burning haystack set on fire my house and my neighbor's. I

may recover from a negligent railroad. He may not. Yet the wrongful act as directly harmed the

one as the other. We may regret that the line was drawn just where it was, but drawn somewhere

it had to be. We said the act of the railroad was not the proximate cause of our neighbor's fire.

Cause it surely was. The words we used were [*353] simply indicative of our notions of public

policy. Other courts think differently. But somewhere they reach the point where they cannot say

the stream comes from any one source.

Take the illustration given in an unpublished manuscript by a distinguished and helpful

writer on the law of torts. A chauffeur negligently collides with another car which is filled with

dynamite, although he could not know it. An explosion follows. A, walking on the sidewalk

nearby, is killed. B, sitting in a window of a building opposite, is cut by flying glass. C, likewise

sitting in a window a block away, is similarly injured. And a further illustration. A nursemaid,

ten blocks away, startled by the noise, involuntarily drops a baby from her arms to the walk. We

are told that C may not recover while A may. As to B it is a question for court or jury. We will

all agree that the baby might not. Because, we are again told, the chauffeur had no reason to

believe his conduct involved any risk of injuring either C or the baby. As to them he was not

negligent.

But the chauffeur, being negligent in risking the collision, his belief that the scope of the

harm he might do would be limited is immaterial. His act unreasonably jeopardized the safety of

any one who might be affected by it. C's injury and that of the baby were directly traceable to the

collision. Without that, the injury would not have happened. C had the right to sit in his office,

secure from such dangers. The baby was entitled to use the sidewalk with reasonable safety.

The true theory is, it seems to me, that the injury to C, if in truth he is to be denied recovery,

and the injury to the baby is that their several injuries were not the proximate result of the

negligence. And here not what the chauffeur had reason to believe would be the result of his

conduct, but what the prudent would foresee, may have a bearing. May have some bearing, for

the problem [*354] of proximate cause is not to be solved by any one consideration.

It is all a question of expediency. There are no fixed rules to govern our judgment. There

are simply matters of which we may take account. We have in a somewhat different connection

spoken of "the stream of events." We have asked whether that stream was deflected—whether it

was forced into new and unexpected channels. (Donnelly v. Piercy Contracting Co., 222 N. Y.

210). This is rather rhetoric than law. There is in truth little to guide us other than common sense.

There are some hints that may help us. The proximate cause, involved as it may be with

many other causes, must be, at the least, something without which the event would not happen.

The court must ask itself whether there was a natural and continuous sequence between cause

and effect. Was the one a substantial factor in producing the other? Was there a direct connection

between them, without too many intervening causes? Is the effect of cause on result not too

attentuated? Is the cause likely, in the usual judgment of mankind, to produce the result? Or by

the exercise of prudent foresight could the result be foreseen? Is the result too remote from the

cause, and here we consider remoteness in time and space. (Bird v. St. Paul F. & M. Ins. Co., 224

N. Y. 47, where we passed upon the construction of a contract—but something was also said on

this subject.) Clearly we must so consider, for the greater the distance either in time or space, the

more surely do other causes intervene to affect the result. When a lantern is overturned the firing

of a shed is a fairly direct consequence. Many things contribute to the spread of the

conflagration—the force of the wind, the direction and width of streets, the character of

intervening structures, other factors. We draw an uncertain and wavering line, but draw it we

must as best we can.

Once again, it is all a question of fair judgment, always [*355] keeping in mind the fact that

we endeavor to make a rule in each case that will be practical and in keeping with the general

understanding of mankind.

Here another question must be answered. In the case supposed it is said, and said correctly,

that the chauffeur is liable for the direct effect of the explosion although he had no reason to

suppose it would follow a collision. "The fact that the injury occurred in a different manner than

that which might have been expected does not prevent the chauffeur's negligence from being in

law the cause of the injury." But the natural results of a negligent act—the results which a

prudent man would or should foresee—do have a bearing upon the decision as to proximate

cause. We have said so repeatedly. What should be foreseen? No human foresight would suggest

that a collision itself might injure one a block away. On the contrary, given an explosion, such a

possibility might be reasonably expected. I think the direct connection, the foresight of which the

courts speak, assumes prevision of the explosion, for the immediate results of which, at least, the

chauffeur is responsible.

It may be said this is unjust. Why? In fairness he should make good every injury flowing

from his negligence. Not because of tenderness toward him we say he need not answer for all

that follows his wrong. We look back to the catastrophe, the fire kindled by the spark, or the

explosion. We trace the consequences—not indefinitely, but to a certain point. And to aid us in

fixing that point we ask what might ordinarily be expected to follow the fire or the explosion.

This last suggestion is the factor which must determine the case before us. The act upon

which defendant's liability rests is knocking an apparently harmless package onto the platform.

The act was negligent. For its proximate consequences the defendant is liable. If its contents

were broken, to the owner; if it fell upon and crushed a passenger's foot, then to him. If it

exploded [*356] and injured one in the immediate vicinity, to him also as to A in the illustration.

Mrs. Palsgraf was standing some distance away. How far cannot be told from the record—

apparently twenty-five or thirty feet. Perhaps less. Except for the explosion, she would not have

been injured. We are told by the appellant in his brief "it cannot be denied that the explosion was

the direct cause of the plaintiff's injuries." So it was a substantial factor in producing the result—

there was here a natural and continuous sequence—direct connection. The only intervening

cause was that instead of blowing her to the ground the concussion smashed the weighing

machine which in turn fell upon her. There was no remoteness in time, little in space. And

surely, given such an explosion as here it needed no great foresight to predict that the natural

result would be to injure one on the platform at no greater distance from its scene than was the

plaintiff. Just how no one might be able to predict. Whether by flying fragments, by broken

glass, by wreckage of machines or structures no one could say. But injury in some form was

most probable.

Under these circumstances I cannot say as a matter of law that the plaintiff's injuries were

not the proximate result of the negligence. That is all we have before us. The court refused to so

charge. No request was made to submit the matter to the jury as a question of fact, even would

that have been proper upon the record before us.

The judgment appealed from should be affirmed, with costs.

POUND, LEHMAN and KELLOGG, JJ., concur with CARDOZO, Ch. J.; ANDREWS, J.,

dissents in opinion in which CRANE and O'BRIEN, JJ., concur.

Judgment reversed, etc.