The fact pattern
Read it twice before you look at the answer
At a crowded street fair, a vendor negligently knocks over a lit sparkler display, which startles a passerby. The startled passerby jerks backward into a stack of folding chairs, which topples and pushes a heavy decorative urn off a low wall. The urn falls onto a fairgoer standing ten feet away, breaking his foot. The injured fairgoer sues the vendor for negligence.
Try it before you scroll
Spend 15 minutes writing your own IRAC answer first — the model below is far more useful after you have committed to your own issue list. These issues are in the facts:
- Breach (assumed from the negligent knock-over)
- Actual cause (but-for)
- Proximate cause — foreseeability and the zone of danger
- Intervening vs. superseding causes
Model IRAC answer
One way to write it — not the only way. Compare it to yours.
Issue
Whether the vendor's negligence in knocking over the display was the proximate cause of an injury produced through a chain of a startled passerby, toppling chairs, and a falling urn.
Rule
Negligence requires duty, breach, actual cause, proximate cause, and damages. Actual cause asks whether the harm would not have occurred but for the defendant's conduct. Proximate cause limits liability to harms of a type that were a reasonably foreseeable result of the breach; under the Cardozo view, duty and liability run only to plaintiffs within the foreseeable zone of danger. An intervening cause that is itself foreseeable does not cut off liability, but an unforeseeable, independent superseding cause does.
Application
Breach and actual cause are not seriously contested: the vendor negligently knocked over the display, and but for that act the chain of events would not have started. The live issue is proximate cause.
The plaintiff will argue that in a dense crowd it is foreseeable that knocking over a startling display will cause people to recoil and collide with nearby objects, and that toppling temporary fair fixtures is exactly the kind of harm that makes such conduct negligent. Under that framing, the startled passerby and the falling chairs are foreseeable intervening causes that do not break the chain, and the injured fairgoer — standing only ten feet away in the same crowd — is within the foreseeable zone of danger.
The vendor will argue the specific sequence is too attenuated: a multi-step chain ending in a decorative urn falling off a wall onto someone ten feet away is the kind of freak, unforeseeable result that should be treated as superseding, echoing the Cardozo majority's concern in Palsgraf that liability not extend to unforeseeable plaintiffs. The strength of each side turns on how generally the court characterizes the risk — 'startling a crowd causes collision injuries' (foreseeable) versus 'a sparkler causes an urn to break a stranger's foot' (not).
Conclusion
Proximate cause is a genuinely close call. A court framing the risk at the general level (crowd panic causing collision injuries) would likely find the vendor liable; one emphasizing the specific, attenuated chain could find the urn's fall a superseding cause. The well-reasoned answer argues both characterizations rather than asserting one.
Verify before you rely on this. This is an original teaching example, not legal advice. Rules vary by jurisdiction and by your professor's framing — check every rule statement against your casebook and class notes before using it.
Now try it timed.
Open the IRAC Practice Gym, set a 15-minute timer, and write your own answer to this fact pattern. You get feedback that helps you think — never an answer written for you.