Poor Mrs. Palsgraph again. . .

Poor Mrs. Palsgraph was back on the scene again today, this time in torts class. We already looked at this case when we studied causation in criminal and I have a previous post dedicated to my thoughts on the case, but I wanted to revisit this peculiar and classic case. (see http://law-new-view.blogspot.com/2005/10/strait-talk.html) Our torts Proffessor added some additional information outside of the case to aid us in our understanding of the case. We looked at the New York Times article from the day after the accident at the train station, where we learn that the package carried by the "itialian" men trying to jump on the train was quite large as opposed to how it is described by Cardozo in the majority opinion. We also learned from the article that on the day the accident occured the train station was packed with pleasures seekers heading to the beach, many of them celebrating an Italian holidy. It explains that the packages was fireworks and that it was common for people to create personal pyrotechnic displays at the beach during the festivities (thus making it quite forseeable that the package contained explosives)