Modern tort law rests on a compact set of court decisions that answered the recurring questions every injury or speech dispute raises: Who owes care to whom? How far does responsibility stretch when things go wrong? When is a product legally defective? How large can a punitive verdict be? And when does the First Amendment shield a publisher from civil damages? The famous tort law cases below, drawn from British and American courts between 1868 and 1996, are the ones that supplied those answers and still frame arguments in courtrooms today.
Donoghue v. Stevenson (1932)
The modern law of negligence begins with a decomposed snail in a bottle of ginger beer. A woman in Scotland became seriously ill after drinking from an opaque bottle that concealed the contamination. She had no contract with the manufacturer or the shopkeeper who served her, and under the commercial law of the time that usually ended the matter.
The House of Lords disagreed. Lord Atkin’s opinion set out what became known as the neighbour principle: you must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions that could foreseeably injure people closely and directly affected by your conduct. A “neighbour,” in his sense, is anyone you should reasonably have in mind when deciding how to act.1Scottish Council of Law Reporting. Donoghue v Stevenson After Donoghue, the absence of a contract no longer shielded a manufacturer from liability for a carelessly made product, and the four familiar elements of a negligence claim — duty, breach, causation, and harm — had a coherent foundation.
MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co. (1916)
Sixteen years before Donoghue, an American court reached a similar result about manufacturer responsibility. Donald MacPherson bought a Buick from a dealer, and while he was driving it, a defective wooden wheel crumbled and threw him from the car. Buick had not made the wheel itself. It bought the wheel from a supplier and installed it without inspection. The company argued it owed nothing to MacPherson because he had bought the car from the dealer.
Judge Benjamin Cardozo, then on the New York Court of Appeals, rejected that defense. When a product is reasonably certain to endanger life if negligently made, and the manufacturer knows it will be used by someone other than the immediate purchaser without further testing, the manufacturer has a duty to build it carefully regardless of any contract.2New York State Unified Court System. MacPherson v Buick MacPherson ended the old rule that manufacturers could hide behind the chain of sale and became the cornerstone of American product liability law.
Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co. (1928)
Duty of care does not extend infinitely, and this is the case that drew the line. At a Long Island Rail Road station, two guards helped a late passenger board a moving train. In the process they dislodged a small newspaper-wrapped package he was carrying. The package contained fireworks. It hit the rails and exploded, and the shockwaves toppled a set of heavy scales onto Helen Palsgraf, who was standing further down the platform.3Justia. Palsgraf v Long Island RR Co
Chief Judge Cardozo, writing for the majority, held the railroad not liable. The guards had no way to know the package contained explosives, and nothing about the situation warned them that helping a passenger board could endanger someone standing far away. “The risk reasonably to be perceived defines the duty to be obeyed,” Cardozo wrote, and because no reasonable person could have anticipated this chain of events, the railroad owed Palsgraf no duty.4New York State Unified Court System. Palsgraf v Long Is RR
Palsgraf is where the difference between actual cause and proximate cause becomes concrete. Actual cause asks the “but for” question: without the defendant’s action, would the injury have happened? Proximate cause asks whether the injury was a foreseeable consequence of that action. When the result is bizarre or unpredictable, the chain of legal responsibility breaks even if the defendant technically set it in motion.
Rylands v. Fletcher (1868)
Not every tort claim requires proof of carelessness. Rylands v. Fletcher established that some activities are so inherently risky that anyone who undertakes them bears responsibility for the resulting damage without any showing of negligence. John Rylands hired contractors to build a reservoir on his land. During construction, the workers discovered old mine shafts filled loosely with debris and failed to seal them properly. When the reservoir was filled, water broke through and flooded Thomas Fletcher’s neighboring coal mine.
The House of Lords held that anyone who brings something onto their land that is likely to cause harm if it escapes is liable for the consequences of that escape. The pivotal idea was “non-natural use” of land. Storing massive quantities of water in a purpose-built reservoir went beyond the ordinary use of property, and the person who introduced that risk had to bear the cost when it materialized. The strict liability principle from Rylands now reaches activities like storing explosives and handling toxic chemicals, where the danger exists regardless of how carefully the work is done.
Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants (1994)
Few tort cases have been as widely misdescribed. The popular version treats Liebeck as a frivolous lawsuit over a coffee spill. The trial record tells a different story. Stella Liebeck, a 79-year-old passenger in a parked car, spilled a cup of McDonald’s coffee into her lap. The coffee was served between 180 and 190 degrees Fahrenheit. She suffered third-degree burns over 16 percent of her body, deep enough to require skin grafts and eight days in the hospital.5American Museum of Tort Law. Liebeck v McDonalds
The case turned on what the company already knew. Evidence showed McDonald’s had received more than 700 prior burn complaints and had kept the temperature unchanged after executives decided that number was insignificant against the billions of cups sold annually. Liebeck’s attorneys argued the coffee was defectively dangerous because it was far hotter than a consumer would expect or could safely drink.5American Museum of Tort Law. Liebeck v McDonalds
The jury awarded $200,000 in compensatory damages, reduced to $160,000 after finding Liebeck 20 percent responsible for the spill, and added $2.7 million in punitive damages, roughly two days of McDonald’s coffee revenue. The trial judge cut the punitive award to $480,000, calling the company’s conduct “willful, wanton, and reckless.” The parties then settled for a confidential amount reported to be under $500,000.5American Museum of Tort Law. Liebeck v McDonalds
BMW of North America v. Gore (1996)
Two years after Liebeck, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed a question that case raised but did not resolve: is there a constitutional ceiling on punitive damages? In BMW v. Gore, an Alabama buyer discovered his supposedly new car had been repainted before delivery to conceal minor cosmetic damage. BMW followed a nationwide policy of not disclosing repairs costing less than 3 percent of a car’s retail price. The jury awarded $4,000 in compensatory damages and $4 million in punitive damages, later reduced by the Alabama Supreme Court to $2 million.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down even the reduced award as “grossly excessive.” Justice Stevens set out three guideposts for evaluating whether a punitive award violates due process: the degree of reprehensibility of the defendant’s conduct, the ratio between compensatory and punitive damages, and the difference between the punitive award and the civil or criminal penalties available for comparable misconduct. BMW’s nondisclosure policy was deceptive, but it lacked the extreme recklessness or indifference to safety that supports a massive punitive verdict, and a 500-to-1 ratio was wildly disproportionate.6Legal Information Institute. BMW of North America Inc v Gore, 517 US 559 (1996)
Seven years later, in State Farm v. Campbell, the Court tightened the standard. “Few awards exceeding a single-digit ratio between punitive and compensatory damages will satisfy due process,” the Court wrote. Juries can still impose severe punishment when a defendant’s behavior is genuinely egregious, particularly if compensatory damages are small, but when compensatory damages are already substantial, even a modest multiplier can push a punitive award past the constitutional line.7Justia. State Farm Mut Automobile Ins Co v Campbell, 538 US 408 (2003)
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964)
Sullivan redefined the line between protecting reputation and protecting speech. L.B. Sullivan, an elected city commissioner in Montgomery, Alabama, sued the New York Times over a full-page fundraising advertisement that contained minor factual errors about police conduct during civil rights protests. An Alabama jury awarded him $500,000. The Supreme Court reversed unanimously.
Justice Brennan held that the First and Fourteenth Amendments bar a public official from recovering damages for defamation unless the official proves “actual malice.” Actual malice here does not mean spite or ill will. It means the speaker knew the statement was false or published it with reckless disregard for whether it was true.8Justia. New York Times Co v Sullivan, 376 US 254 (1964) Ordinary mistakes, sloppy reporting, or a failure to investigate do not meet that bar. The speaker must have entertained serious doubts about the truth and published anyway. Later decisions extended the actual malice requirement beyond elected officials to public figures more broadly, including celebrities, prominent business leaders, and anyone who voluntarily enters a public controversy.
Hustler Magazine v. Falwell (1988)
Sullivan governed defamation. Hustler Magazine v. Falwell asked whether a public figure could sidestep Sullivan’s high bar by suing for intentional infliction of emotional distress instead. Hustler published a parody advertisement depicting the Reverend Jerry Falwell in a crude fictional scenario, labeled as a parody and listed as fiction in the table of contents. Falwell sued for defamation and for intentional infliction of emotional distress. The jury rejected the defamation claim, finding that no reasonable reader would take the parody as stating actual facts, but it awarded Falwell damages on the emotional distress claim.
The Supreme Court reversed unanimously. Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote that a public figure cannot recover for intentional infliction of emotional distress based on a publication unless the publication contains a false statement of fact made with actual malice. Allowing emotional distress claims to succeed where defamation claims fail would let juries punish speech simply because they found it offensive, and the “outrageousness” standard used in emotional distress claims is too subjective to serve as a workable limit on speech about public figures.9Justia. Hustler Magazine Inc v Falwell, 485 US 46 (1988) Falwell closed a loophole that could otherwise have chilled satire, political cartoons, and sharp public commentary.
Taken together, these decisions supply the working vocabulary of tort litigation. Donoghue and MacPherson establish that responsibility for a dangerous product travels with the product, not the contract. Palsgraf sets the outer edge of that responsibility at foreseeability. Rylands adds a strict liability track for uses of land that carry unusual risk. Liebeck shows how a defect claim combines with punitive damages when a company knows about a hazard and does nothing; Gore and Campbell mark the constitutional ceiling on how far punitive damages can go. Sullivan and Falwell carve out the space where the First Amendment prevents tort law from being used to suppress criticism and satire of public figures.