The Long Island Rail Road wins again

Long Island Business News, Jun 28, 2007 by Ross Daly

Helen Palsgraf finally got her day in court-again-in the case of the exploding package of fireworks on the Long Island Rail Road.

Unfamiliar with the case?

Perhaps you don't know that Lenin has died, or that Washington is plagued by the Teapot Dome Scandal, or that Babe Ruth hit 46 home runs for the Yankees.

Welcome to 1924.

Last week, the Historical Society of the Courts of the State of New York staged an argument of the nearly century-old case, Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. Co., a landmark in the development of tort law in the United States.

The case, read by nearly all first year law students, stems from a bizarre set of facts. On Sunday morning, Aug. 24, 1924, two men tried to jump aboard a moving train at the Long Island Rail Road's East New York station. Two employees of the railroad, one on the train and one on the platform, tried to assist one of the men aboard, and as they did so the man dropped the package he was carrying. Filled with fireworks, it exploded, sending smoke and shattered glass across the platform.

The blast knocked over a scale on the platform, injuring Palsgraf, a 40-year-old resident of the Brooklyn section of Ridgewood who was taking her two daughters to Rockaway Beach. She sued the railroad for damages, and a jury ruled in her favor, awarding her $6,000.

"The railroad was unlikely to engender much sympathy from a Brooklyn jury," William H. Mann wrote in an article examining the case. "The line was a popular target of articles and letters in New York area newspapers complaining about the quality of the railroad's service. These included reports of poorly maintained equipment, a lack of cleanliness, meaningless schedules, and overcrowded trains." Does any of this sound familiar?

The railroad took the case to the Appellate Court, where it also lost, 3-2, and finally to the Court of Appeals, New York's highest court, where the LIRR won on a 4-3 vote in 1928. In all, 13 judges had heard the case for a cumulative tally of 7-6 for the railroad.

The Court of Appeals opinion was written by Benjamin Cardozo, the chief judge. Cardozo would also go on to an esteemed career as a Supreme Court judge from 1932 to 1938.

Cardozo wrote in his ruling that the package had fallen to the tracks. Not so, said John Bracken, of Bracken and Margolin LLP in Islandia, arguing on Palsgraf's behalf at the moot court at the Nassau County Bar Association in Mineola.

"The package fell in the gap!" Bracken said. "The Long Island Rail Road had a gap between the train and the platform." The railroad was negligent and had a duty to protect its riders, Bracken argued.

"Would you advocate that the LIRR should search packages to make sure they are safe?" asked Nassau County District Judge Susan Kluewer.

No, said Bracken, though looking forward from 1928 he conceded, "Someday that may happen."

Prof. Eileen Kaufman of the Touro Law Center in Central Islip argued for the railroad.

"It is our position that the extraordinary events that unfolded here could not have been foreseen," she said.

Much like the rulers of yesteryear, today's judges were split. For example, Kluewer and Jonathan Dachs, a partner at Shayne, Dachs, Stanisci, Corker & Sauer in Mineola, voted for Palsgraf. On the other hand, Nassau County Supreme Court Justice Ute Lally and Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi sided with the railroad.

The danger Suozzi said, could not have been foreseen, "even with the impending Sacco and Vanzetti trial. Even with Italian anarchists roaming our streets!" (Sacco and Vanzetti were actually executed in 1927, the year before the Court of Appeals heard the Palsgraf case. But give the exec points for historical-legal-ethnic-political humor.)

With the vote even at two, A. Thomas Levin, of Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein P.C. in Garden City broke the deadlock.

"It shows you how this case remains contentious," Levin said, before he broke the tie by voting to uphold Cardozo's decision. As in 1928, the railroad had won.