2.3 Negligence: The Duty of Care, Breach Proof & Causation Rules

🎯 Essential Doctrinal Takeaways

• Under Cardozo's majority view in Palsgraf, duty is owed only to foreseeable plaintiffs within the reasonable zone of danger.
• Negligence per se requires that the plaintiff be in the statutory protected class and the harm be the specific type intended to be prevented.
• Res ipsa loquitur creates a permissive inference of breach when the accident does not ordinarily occur without negligence and control is exclusive.
• Subsequent ordinary medical negligence is a foreseeable intervening risk, not a superseding cause, and does not relieve the original tortfeasor.

Negligence requires duty, breach, causation (actual and proximate), and damages. Under the landmark Cardozo majority opinion in Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co., duty is relational: an actor owes a duty of care only to foreseeable plaintiffs situated within the physical zone of danger created by the actor's conduct.

A plaintiff may establish breach through direct evidence of standard of care deviations or through specialized evidentiary doctrines. Under negligence per se, unexcused violation of a safety statute conclusively establishes duty and breach if the plaintiff is a member of the protected class and the harm suffered is the type the statute was enacted to prevent. Under res ipsa loquitur, a permissive inference of negligence arises when the instrumentality was in the defendant's exclusive control and the event ordinarily does not happen without negligence.

Proximate cause limits liability to foreseeable consequences. Under Restatement (Second) of Torts § 457, normal efforts of medical personnel in treating an injury caused by the defendant's negligence are foreseeable intervening forces, not superseding causes. The original tortfeasor remains legally liable for the compounded injury.

⚠️ NextGen Bar Examination Traps & Pitfalls

• Applying Judge Andrews' minority dissent asserting that a duty of care is owed to the world at large.
• Treating res ipsa loquitur as a mandatory directed verdict rather than a permissive evidentiary inference for the jury.
• Assuming intervening medical negligence cuts off proximate causation for the original injury.