Legal Concept of the Day: The Eggshell Plaintiff

Here's an interesting concept in tort law I just learned today. It's called the eggshell plaintiff (emphasis mine):

The eggshell skull rule (or thin-skull rule) is a legal doctrine used in both tort law and criminal law that holds an individual liable for all consequences resulting from their activities leading to an injury to another person, even if the victim suffers unusual damages due to a pre-existing vulnerability or medical condition. The term implies that if a person had a skull as delicate as the shell of an egg, and a tortfeasor or assailant who did not know of that condition were to hit that person on the head, causing the skull unexpectedly to break, the responsible party would be held liable for all damages resulting from the wrongful contact, even though they were not foreseeable. The general maxim is that the defendant must "take their victims as they find them", a quotation from the judgment of Lawton LJ in the criminal case of R v. Blaue.

The doctrine is applied in all areas of torts - intentional torts, negligence, and strict liability cases - as well as in criminal law. There is no requirement of physical contact with the victim - if a trespasser's wrongful presence on the victim's property so terrifies the victim that he has a fatal heart attack, the trespasser will be liable for the damages stemming from his original tort.

The foundation for this rule is based primarily on policy grounds. The courts do not want the accused to rely on the victim's own vulnerability to avoid liability.

This explains the Vosburg v. Putney case we studied for our Tort class on Wednesday night in which a boy who is almost 12-years-old kicks the shin of a 14-year-old boy. The 14-year-old was recovering from a leg injury and the kick caused him to permanently lose the use of his leg. The younger boy was held liable for the damage.

One thing I learned in my law and economics class last year is that while legal reasonings have a very real logic behind them, the law isn't always what you'd expect it to be. The other thing I've learned is that many of these case studies can be incredibly sad. It is sobering to think that they are real events that happened to real people and not just hypothetical examples used for class.