Torts - Cases, Principles, and Institutions Fifth Edition, 2016a

Witt & Tani, TCPI 7. Proximate Cause
the operation to one admittedly more competent to oversee it than he was.
Kinsman Transit I, 338 F.2d at 715.
Judge Friendly’s conclusion was therefore that the liability of the Kinsman Transit
Company was limited to the value of the Shiras. (This is very likely why the court did not need to
resolve the question of Kinsman Transit’s liability to upstream riparian property owners.) One
result was that the taxpayers of the City of Buffalo bore the lion’s share of the damages from the
flooding.
A far more important result was that George Steinbrenner went on to purchase and
transform the then-moribund New York Yankees with money he had been able to keep by virtue
of the fact that he was less competent than his employees. Steinbrenner’s sons own the Yankees
to this day.
4. Kinsman Transit II. In Kinsman Transit II, decided a little more than three years after
Kinsman Transit I, the Second Circuit upheld the dismissal of claims brought by plaintiff Cargill,
which owned grain being stored in a ship downstream of the drawbridge, and Cargo Carriers,
which was contractually obligated to unload corn from a ship moored upstream of the drawbridge.
After the accident, which blocked Cargill’s grain from getting to the grain elevators located
upstream of the drawbridge, Cargill was forced to purchase replacement grain to meet contractual
obligations it had to deliver grain. Cargo Carriers, in turn, was required to rent expensive
equipment to complete the job of unloading the corn because an ice jam caused by the flooding
had formed between the dock and the ship from which Cargo Carriers was unloading the corn.
The tug boats and icebreakers that would ordinarily have cleared the ice jam were located
downstream of the drawbridge and unable to get past the drawbridge after the accident.
Judge Irving Kauffman wrote the opinion for the Second Circuit, affirming the dismissal
of Cargill’s and Cargo Carriers’ claims:
When the instant case was last here, we held—although without discussion of the
Cargill and Cargo Carriers claims—that it was a foreseeable consequence of the
negligence of the City of Buffalo and Kinsman Transit Company that the river
would be dammed. . . . It would seem to follow from this that it was foreseeable that
transportation on the river would be disrupted and that some would incur expenses
because of the need to find alternative routes of transportation or substitutes for
goods delayed by the disaster. 5 It may be that the specific manner was not
foreseeable in which the damages to Cargill and Cargo Carriers would be incurred
but such strict foreseeability—which in practice would rarely exist except in
5
In a claim not before us on this appeal, Judge Burke denied recovery to the Buffalo Transit Company for its
expenses in rerouting its buses until a new bridge became available . . . . He found that the defendants did not
know that the transit company had a right to use the bridge. It would certainly not stretch the concept of
foreseeability as it is developed in the cases to hold that it is “reasonably foreseeable” that buses use major river
bridges. . . .
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