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Palsgraf Revisited (Again), Joseph W. Little

UF Law Faculty Publications

Dean Prosser wrote Palsgraf Revisited because he believed that courts had inadequate standards to make predictable and consistent duty decisions. He expressed his discontent by providing a thumbnail description of decisions that appeared to him to be rationally irreconcilable. Acknowledging that Cardozo's powerful Palsgraf imagery had been persuasive to most courts, Prosser fastened upon it as the focus of his dissatisfaction. Hence, Prosser provided us Palsgraf Revisited.

I fault Prosser for looking for a nirvana that has no existence in law. Rarely will a court make a difficult, fact based, policy driven decision that all thoughtful legal commentators will …