Problem Plaintiffs

Abstract

It is often said that liability in negligence is limited to those who might foreseeably be affected by the defendant’s carelessness. This is justified by saying that the defendant must be in breach of a duty of care owed to the plaintiff rather than to the world at large: what singles the plaintiff out is that she is the foreseeable victim of the defendant’s wrong. The rule serves to weed out claims by those whose injuries are regarded as farfetched in much the same way as the Wagon Mound rule of remoteness of damage weeds out heads of damage that are unforeseeable consequences of the defendant’s negligence (see Chapter 11).