array of matters be they financial, political, emotional, psychological, physical
or anything else.
A chain of consequence can be unpredictable. This is illustrated by the
Palsgraf
case, which is a leading case from the United States on causation in
the tort of negligence.³ These are the facts.
On 24 August 1924 a
had stopped at Queen’s
Jamaica Station. It then started to move out of the station. A passenger whose
identity was never revealed was carrying a package 15 inches long and
wrapped in newspaper. It contained fireworks but there was nothing on the
packaging or appearance of the package to indicate this. The passenger
hurried along the platform in an attempt to board the now moving train. The
passenger appeared to be falling. Two employees of the railroad company
rendered assistance. One was on the train and the other was on the platform.
The guard on the train attempted to pull the passenger into the car while
the
guard on the platform attempted to push him into the car from behind. These
attempts to assist the passenger caused the package the passenger was holding
to fall on the rails. When the package hit the rails the fireworks in it exploded.
Then the explosion caused some scales at the other end of the platform to fall
over. This happened either because of the shock of the explosion or because a
panicking bystander upset
the scales. The falling scales injured Mrs
Helen
Palsgraf who was standing on the platform
after buying a ticket to go to
Rockaway Beach. Mrs Palsgraf sued the Long Island Railroad. Mrs Palsgraf
lost her case on the basis that her injury was not reasonably foreseeable.
Causation can be complex. On 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo a Bosnian
revolutionary, Gavrilo Princip, assassinated the Austrian archduke, Franz
Ferdinand and his wife
Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg. This assassination
precipitated, and in that sense caused, the four years of carnage that was
known as World War I, which began in July 1914. This event was, however,
simply the trigger that set off declarations of war. While the actual causes of
the war are complicated and are still debated one of the basic contributions
consisted of unresolved tensions among the European powers which had led
to a complex web of treaties involving mutual support in times of aggression.
This is how the assassination of one husband and one wife led to the killing of
millions of people.
Proposition 2: Actions Possess Intrinsic and Consequential
Value
There is a saying that if you give a person a fish you feed him for a day, while
if you teach him how to fish you feed him for life. This is a colourful
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3
Palsgraf v Long Island Railroad Co 162 NE 99 (NY 1928)
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