Nine American Jewish Thinkers by Milton Konvitz

Author:Milton Konvitz [Konvitz, Milton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General, Jewish Studies
ISBN: 9781351326667
Google: eyFWDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

II

An opinion of Cardozo’s that has become a landmark in tort law is MacPherson v. Buick Motor Company, decided in 1916.8 The opinion illustrates how Cardozo applied the sociological approach in decision making. The plaintiff had purchased a Buick car from an authorized dealer and was injured while driving the car. The injury was caused by a defective spoke of a wheel. The owner of the car had no contractual relationship with the manufacturer, so the company argued that it had no duty to the owner, that it had a contractual relationship only to the dealer. The manufacturer cited precedents that went back to the stagecoach days. Cardozo, writing for the Court of Appeals, upheld the plaintiffs claim. The law had been settled in most jurisdictions that buyers of a product could not sue the manufacturer for negligence if they made the purchase from a dealer and not from the manufacturer. Cardozo, however, argued that the applicable test should be that the manufacturer should be liable for any harm that the product could foreseeably cause. The manufacturer knew that the dealer was not purchasing cars for his own use but for those who would purchase them from him.

Arguing from analogies, Cardozo looked past rules to an underlying principle, which he saw as allowing an injured party to recover from the manufacturer with whom he had had no direct dealing. The manufacturer has duties not only to its dealers but also to the users of its products. “Precedents drawn from the days of travel by stage coach do not fit the conditions of travel today,” wrote Cardozo. MacPherson in time became the ruling case in almost all jurisdictions. Today consumers universally look to the manufacturer as an implied guarantor of the safety of its product. In July 1998 Ralph Nader, leading proponent of consumer interests, announced his intention to establish a Museum of American Tort Law in his hometown of Winsted, Connecticut. The museum, he said, would exhibit some consumer products that notoriously have been held to have been negligently made— “the Pinto with the exploding gas tank, inflammable pajamas, asbestos, and breast implants…” The museum might well be dedicated to the memory of Judge Benjamin N. Cardozo, as the father of American consumer-protection law.9

Another tort case in which Cardozo’s opinion for the Court of Appeals has become famous and a favorite of law professors is Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co., decided in 1928.10 Helen Palsgraf, after buying a ticket, stood on a platform waiting for a train. A train stopped but was going to another destination. A man ran to catch the train that was already moving. He was carrying a package. He jumped aboard a car. He seemed unsteady as if about to fall. A guard on the car, who held the door open, reached forward to help him, and another guard on the platform pushed him from behind. As this was going on, the passenger lost hold of the package and it fell upon the rails. It was a small package, wrapped in newspapers, and one could not tell its contents from its appearance.

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