"How far should foreseeability extend? After a serious late-night accident, a car is towed to the curbside of the locked yard of an auto repair shop. Hours later, after the slowly leaking fuel tank pools gasoline in the gutter, a passing pedestrian tosses away a match after lighting a cigarette. The result is as might be expected. Are there some things that simply must be described as accidents? Should we split up liabilities between the car driver, the tow truck driver, and the pedestrian, or just conclude that some things are simply inevitable? "

 

Under the doctrine of reasonable foreseeability, a defendant owes a duty of care only to plaintiffs who are reasonably foreseeable. Any party likely to be harmed by the defendant's acts or omissions would be treated as a reasonably foreseeable plaintiff. The court should first decide whether the danger was foreseeable before deciding if a defendant violated his duty of care by behaving below the standard of care. If it is unreasonable to anticipate that there is a risk, it would not be required for the defendant to take steps to avoid it. In this particular scenario, the passing pedestrian will be liable for damages which are reasonably foreseeable in that it would be reckless to to toss away a match around a car repair shop, since there are obviously fire hazards. Foreseeability, as a personal injury law concept can be used to determine the proximate cause after the accident. In regard to the car driver and tow truck driver, they would not share liability since they could not have reasonably foreseen the general consequences that would result due to their conduct of leaving the car with the slowly leaking fuel tank. Instead, the pedestrian becomes the unforeseeable, superseding cause.