Also known as: scope of risk rule · scope-of-risk rules · scope of the risk
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A principle that limits an actor's liability for harm to those results that fall within the risks that made the actor's conduct tortious or criminal. The rule treats an intervening force as non-superseding when the harm remains the type of injury the original conduct foreseeably risked creating or increasing.
Prime Flight routed an unstable prototype drone over a daycare play area to save time. The drone lost control and crashed into the adjacent street, injuring Wade who was walking home from school. Because the routing decision created the very risk of crash-related injury to persons in the immediate vicinity, the scope-of-risk rule treats the malfunction and resulting harm as within the dangers that made the conduct negligent, so Prime Flight remains liable to Wade.
A driver negligently struck a child in view of the child's mother who stood nearby. The mother suffered severe emotional distress. Under the scope-of-risk rule the mother's harm fell within the risks that made the driving negligent because the conduct created a foreseeable danger of physical injury to persons in the immediate area, supporting liability for the emotional injury as well.
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The rule holds that an intervening force does not relieve the actor of liability when the harm remains within the risks the negligent conduct created or increased. Only when a third person intentionally causes harm outside that risk does the rule cut off liability.
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No. The rule focuses on the type of harm rather than the exact mechanism. As long as the injury is the same general kind that made the conduct risky, variations in how the harm occurs do not defeat liability.
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An event is too remote when the resulting harm differs in kind from the risks that made the conduct tortious or criminal. Extraordinary or bizarre outcomes that bear no fair relation to the original risk fall outside the rule's protection of liability.
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In criminal cases the rule requires that the actual result be within the risk the actor consciously disregarded and not so remote or accidental that liability would be unjust. The same type-of-harm inquiry used in torts governs whether the result supports conviction.
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…to those risks or hazards whose likelihood made the conduct unreasonably dangerous. Duty, in other words, is measured by the scope of the risk which negligent conduct foreseeably entails." (2 Harper & James, The Law of Torts, supra, at p. 1018; fns. omitted.) [6a] This foreseeable risk may be of two types. The first class…