In assessing negligence, when is a duty of care owed?

There's a lot to unpack here, so strap in.

First, keep in mind that negligence is all about unintentional harm caused as a result of a defendant's actions. Sometimes, though, a single action can result in a domino-effect of victims. For example, a car that runs through a red light and negligently strikes another car may cause that car to hit a pedestrian on the sidewalk, who may have been holding a ladder for someone cleaning a roof, who falls through the window of the building belonging to a daycare and lands on top of a baby. At what point do you no longer hold the negligent driver at fault?

Or, to complicate things further, imagine that the pedestrian holding the ladder was on his phone and not paying attention like he was supposed to. Had he been paying attention, he could have alerted the guy on the ladder to jump onto the roof, which would have enabled him to avoid falling through the window onto the child.

Let's complicate it even more. Imagine that the daycare hired someone to install special glass to prevent the babies from breaking through and falling out of them. Unfortunately, they were installed incorrectly, which allowed the guy on the ladder to break through and land on the child. Is the window installer responsible for the roof cleaner or child's injury?

Under the rule followed by a majority of courts (known as the Cardozo view), a duty of care is owed only to plaintiffs that were within a foreseeable zone of danger. What constitutes the foreseeable zone of danger? That is up to you to argue on the exam. Using our example above, we start with the negligent act. Here, it was the act of driving through a red light, as drivers have a duty to follow the rules of the road, which include stopping at red lights. A clear argument then can be made for the driver who was hit being in the "zone of danger," because striking a car driving with the right-of-way is the most obvious consequence of not stopping at a red light. Likewise, it would be a fairly easy argument to say that a pedestrian standing on the sidewalk next to the intersection is within the "zone of danger" of people negligently driving through the intersection. But as we start getting further down the line of dominos, and more remote, it will require more convincing to establish that someone was within the zone of danger. Those who are arguably outside of the zone of danger include the man on the ladder fixing the room, and the child he landed on through the window.

But what if the child brought a suit against the man holding the ladder? One argument may be that someone who is cleaning a roof next to windows should be careful not to cause anyone or anything to crash through those windows. The guy hold the ladder was on his phone, which resulted in his co-worker on the ladder falling on the child. What if the child brought a suit against the company who installed the glass incorrectly? One argument could be that it was within the zone of danger that incorrectly-installed glass is easier to break, and the result of such a breaking would be a person getting hurt. However, is this type of harm foreseeable? Arguably, if a child pressed against the glass and it broke, causing them to fall outside, that would be a much easier argument to make against the installer. But why would they have foreseen someone crashing through the window from the outside and landing on a child?

As you can see, negligence issues often create numerous rabbit-holes to analyze. On exams, this is why prompts will generally direct you about which parties to analyze about negligence. Here, it may say something like, "What claims does the pedestrian have against the negligent driver?" rather than, "Who can sue who for what?" That being said, sometimes the latter is the prompt (especially in law school), so you get more points the deeper you can dive into your assessment.

FINALLY, under the rule followed by a minority of courts (known as the Andrews view), a duty of care is owed to everyone who is harmed as a result of the initial breach of duty. In other words, all plaintiffs are considered foreseeable so long as they can establish the initial breach of duty. In our example above, the child would be able to sue the negligent driver for their damages because they owed a duty to the car they struck, which hit the pedestrian, which caused a man to fall through a window onto the child.