So let's talk about the legendary foreseeable plaintiff
Picture a grand stage, brimming with the cast of daily life—bustling drivers, ambitious skateboarders, hurried text-walkers, and more. On this ever-spinning stage, each of us unknowingly dances in or out of one another’s “zone of danger.” It may sound dramatic, but the concept behind it—owing a duty to reasonably foreseeable plaintiffs—is fundamental to how courts decide if someone is legally responsible for injuries they cause.
Generally speaking, every person owes a duty to exercise reasonable care toward others whenever their actions could foreseeably cause harm
But the duty is not infinite - it has boundaries. One major boundary is that you typically owe a duty only to those who fall within the "zone of danger" - people who could be reasonably foreseen to be harmed by your carelessness
Each of us creates risk every moment of every day.
Risks to who? People in our zone of danger.
Our zones of danger are like little bubbles around us of people we could potentially and foreseeably hurt
Sometimes they get big - like if we're driving a car!
Sometimes they are small - like when we're knitting.
Who is in a car's zone of danger?
Someone driving a car could possibly hurt: other drivers, pedestrians, nearby cyclists... maybe even property owners if they crash.
But what if someone is driving a car and a helicopter gets distracted by a glare coming off the car from the sun and crashes.
Is this within the zone of danger of a person driving a car?
No.
Because it's not reasonably foreseeable that someone driving a car could harm someone that way.
The helicopter is not a reasonably foreseeable plaintiff in the zone of danger and therefore is not owed a duty.
Okay - so you get the idea.
Everything we do, we create risk.
And we owe a duty to anyone in the world who is in our little danger bubble as we are going about our day. But we only owe a duty to foreseeable plaintiffs because we're only liable for the foreseeable consequences of our conduct.
But the bar exam usually only tests the exceptions to this rule - and in this case, the exceptions will be people who are owed a duty despite not being traditionally foreseeable
