Also known as: scope of risk
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A limitation on tort liability that confines an actor's responsibility to those harms that arise from the very risks that rendered the actor's conduct tortious. The inquiry focuses on the hazards that made the original conduct negligent and asks whether the plaintiff's injury falls among them.
Select any source to read its text and confirm it supports the definition.
Sterling Manufacturing left a loading dock unsecured after employees finished their shift. An intruder entered through the open gate, stole a forklift, and drove it into a neighboring warehouse where it struck and injured Skylar Sullivan. The risk of unauthorized entry and resulting property damage or personal injury was precisely the hazard that made leaving the dock unsecured negligent.
Sydney Santos drove negligently and struck a vehicle carrying Samantha Stone. Stephen Shaw, Samantha's father, witnessed the collision from across the street and suffered severe emotional distress. The risk that made Sydney's driving negligent was physical injury to other motorists and pedestrians in the path of the car, not emotional injury to distant family members who observed the accident.
The scope-of-the-risk test asks whether the harm that occurred is among the hazards that made the defendant's conduct negligent in the first place. But-for causation is a broader factual inquiry that includes every consequence that would not have happened without the defendant's act. The risk test narrows liability to harms that fall within the original zone of danger created by the negligence.
Supporting sources
An intervening criminal act remains within the scope of the risk when the defendant's conduct created or increased the very opportunity for that type of criminal harm. If the defendant undertook a duty to protect against unauthorized entry and then performed that duty negligently, the resulting criminal intrusion and injury are treated as within the original risk rather than as a superseding cause.
Supporting sources
An extraordinary natural event relieves liability only when it produces a kind of harm different from the risk that made the defendant's conduct negligent. If the resulting injury is of the same general type as the original risk, the natural event does not operate as a superseding cause even though its magnitude was unusual.
Supporting sources
Identify each negligent omission separately, state the particular risk it created, then compare that risk to the harm that actually occurred. For each omission, determine whether the intervening act or force produced a harm of the same kind or a qualitatively different kind. Conclude by weighing which risks remain within the original scope after the comparison.
Supporting sources