[HN Gopher] What Is a Tort?
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What Is a Tort?
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 20 points
Date : 2026-03-11 20:12 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (harvardlawreview.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (harvardlawreview.org)
| jjgreen wrote:
| An Irish lady of easy virtue.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| A baby tortoise.
| teachrdan wrote:
| But what's a pupper?
| chuckadams wrote:
| One who pups, of course.
| anyonecancode wrote:
| What the teacher did.
| piker wrote:
| For those interested, the statement of facts in Palsgraf is
| regarded as some of the best legal writing of all time. It's
| really quite interesting in both its lack of detail but clarity.
|
| > Plaintiff was standing on a platform of defendant's railroad
| after buying a ticket to go to Rockaway Beach. A train stopped at
| the station, bound for another place. Two men ran forward to
| catch it. One of the men reached the platform of the car without
| mishap, though the train was already moving. The other man,
| carrying a package, jumped aboard the car, but seemed unsteady as
| if about to fall. A guard on the car, who had held the door open,
| reached forward to help him in, and another guard on the platform
| pushed him from behind. In this act, the package was dislodged,
| and fell upon the rails. It was a package of small size, about
| fifteen inches long, and was covered by a newspaper. In fact it
| contained fireworks, but there was nothing in its appearance to
| give notice of its contents. The fireworks when they fell
| exploded. The shock of the explosion threw down some scales at
| the other end of the platform, many feet away. The scales struck
| the plaintiff, causing injuries for which she sues.
| tptacek wrote:
| "The scales startled a sleeping cat inside the station. The cat
| lept in alarm, claws bared, and clung to a length of cord.
| Suspended by the cord was a small anvil, dangling above a board
| balanced atop a saw horse. Frayed from the cat's claws, the
| cord severed, and the anvil plunged towards one end of the
| board. On the other end of that board was a marble..."
| behehebd wrote:
| Sue the enthusiastic butterfly in 2004
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| This comment brought me back in time 40+ years to a Saturday
| morning perched in front of our TV. Thank you.
| rzzzt wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnzLconK4Tw&t=73s
| jfengel wrote:
| So that's what counts as good legal writing, huh?
|
| I see a lot of extraneous detail (e.g. "bound for another
| place", "a package of small size, about fifteen inches long,
| and was covered by a newspaper"). The sentence "The fireworks
| when they fell exploded" is clunky.
|
| It's also missing the critical detail of who she is suing. The
| point of the story is to explain how she got injured, but gives
| no idea who is actually involved. The guards? The other man who
| got on the train and vanished from the story? (Turns out it's
| the railroad company, who is not mentioned in the story at
| all.)
|
| Wikipedia summarizes the relevant facts in one sentence:
|
| _Two men attempted to board the train before [the plaintiff
| 's]; one (aided by railroad employees) dropped a package that
| exploded, causing a large coin-operated scale on the platform
| to hit her._
|
| Incidentally, can you set off fireworks just by dropping them?
| That sounds unlikely to me.
| ectocardia wrote:
| There's a bit of advocacy involved here-- the writer is
| trying to convince you that the sequence of events was so
| absurd as to be not "foreseeable". Other than that, I agree
| with you that it's a bit verbose; it's just how a lot of
| these judgments were written back then.
| piker wrote:
| > Incidentally, can you set off fireworks just by dropping
| them? That sounds unlikely to me.
|
| I understand there is speculation that Cardozo downplayed a
| suspicion that these were some kind of domestic terrorists
| carrying actual explosives.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| Court decisions are often prosaic, even flowery; brevity is
| not the primary (or at least, certainly not the sole) metric
| by which they are judged.
|
| That said, I don't really see what is special about the
| quoted passage either. I have read many decisions and this
| seems pretty standard for a recounting of the basic facts.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| > story? (Turns out it's the railroad company, who is not
| mentioned in the story at all.)
|
| Palsgraf v. LIRR, it's right there in the caption.
| rkagerer wrote:
| For anyone wondering, she (plaintiff) won at a jury trial and
| an appeal, but the railroad appealed again and ultimately won
| as the judges determined tort requires a breach of a duty of
| care to the individual harmed and the consequence of the
| guard's actions was not foreseeable.
| rkagerer wrote:
| I wonder if she'd have had better luck against the guy who
| dangerously hopped the train while carrying explosive
| material. Or in the post-911 world where society seems to
| have normalized a more paranoid level of expectations around
| security.
| piker wrote:
| Professor: and what might the railroad in this case have
| that the train-hopping man lacks?
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| A tort is a harm done to a person. Generally, this word is only
| used in civil legal proceedings.
|
| Because it can be a fuzzy concept, books and (non-criminal & non-
| constitutional) courses on law (at least in the US) will spend a
| _lot_ of time on torts.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| Thank you. I had read a few pages of the linked article and was
| disappointed that it contained no legible definition of the
| term.
| RattlesnakeJake wrote:
| > What Is a Tort?
|
| My brain always starts with the assumption that it's some sort of
| British pastry, and takes a minute to adjust.
| matt_daemon wrote:
| A _torte_ is (according the Wikipedia):
|
| > a rich, usually multilayered, cake that is filled with
| whipped cream, buttercreams, mousses, jams, or fruit
|
| So you could be excused
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