Also known as: zones of risk · zone of danger
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A doctrinal limit on the scope of duty in negligence that confines liability to those plaintiffs situated within the range of reasonably foreseeable risk created by the defendant's conduct. A defendant owes no duty to a plaintiff outside that range even if injury occurs in fact.
Liberty Stage placed Yuri's merchandise booth several hundred yards from the main stage in a low-density vendor zone after receiving radio reports of escalating fights. The promoter took no steps to add barriers or redirect paths. When the fights triggered a stampede that surged along the only available routes and knocked Yuri to the ground, the promoter's failure to control the crowd placed Yuri inside the zone of risk created by its own omissions.
Zoya watched from across the street as a negligent driver struck her child in the crosswalk. Although Zoya suffered no physical impact herself, the driver could reasonably have foreseen that a parent would be present and would suffer severe emotional distress from witnessing the injury. Zoya therefore stood within the zone of risk for purposes of recovering for her resulting illness.
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Zuniga Freight's negligence caused a chemical fire that forced the temporary closure of a nearby airport terminal. People Express Airlines, operating flights from that terminal, incurred substantial lost profits during the shutdown. Because the airline's operations were located within the zone of risk created by the foreseeable spread of the fire, the carrier could recover its economic losses without physical damage to its own property.
The doctrine originated in physical-injury cases to identify the foreseeable plaintiff but has been extended to certain claims for negligently inflicted emotional distress and pure economic loss when the plaintiff is situated within the foreseeable range of the defendant's conduct.
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When a defendant has actual knowledge of escalating third-party violence on premises it controls, the zone of risk created by its failure to intervene can extend to invitees located along foreseeable escape paths even if they are hundreds of yards away.
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Yes, provided the defendant could reasonably foresee that its conduct would cause severe fright or shock in a person normally constituted who is situated like the plaintiff.
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No. Specific contemporaneous warnings that violence is escalating can render injury to a plaintiff along foreseeable paths reasonably foreseeable even if no identical stampede has occurred before.
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…trauma caused by the defendant's negligence only if the plaintiff were present at the scene of the accident and were in the zone of danger, is an artificial and unrealistically restrictive barrier. We shall explain that the availability of a cause of action for emotional trauma should turn on the defendant's breach of a duty…