Summary: Negligence

Words: 587
Pages: 3

An Unintentional Tort also known as Negligence is defined as "A doctrine that says a person is liable for harm that was foreseeable consequences of his or hers actions" (Cheeseman, pg.101). In the case Liebeck versus McDonald's, Palsgraf versus The long Island Railroad are both Unintentional Tort cases that are widely recognized today. Stella Liebeck and a 79 year-old woman sued McDonald's for serving coffee that gave her 3rd degree burns when she accidentally spilled it on her lap in a parked car. Helen Palsgraf was waiting for a train when a man was rushed onto a moving train. As he was pushed onto the train by the guards he dropped a package full of fireworks onto the tracks where it exploded and cause a scale near Palsgraf to fall on her. The difference between these two cases is that Palsgraf did not do anything to cause the weight to fall on her where Stella accidentally spilled the coffee on her lap. Another difference between these two cases is Stella was not in McDonald's when the incident occurred, Palsgraf was located in the train station where the accident occurred. …show more content…
104). From my understanding of the court holdings in Palsgraf versus The Long Island Train Station. The train station believed that they could not be held liable for negligence because there was not a proximate cause of the weight falling on her. Also the guards could not be held liable because there was no way for them to know about the fireworks, it could not only foreseen as dangerous and not to the extent of others being harmed on their property. The case was later dismissed by the judge and Palsgraf had to pay the train companies legal