 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Walpert11/21/2000
e Ultramares' analysis is the notion that it is unfair, extreme, and out of proportion, to subject a defendant to negligence liability, without limitation, for which there has been only economic damages suffered by third parties, with whom that defendant has no meaningful relationship:
"If liability for negligence exists, a thoughtless slip or blunder, the failure to detect a theft or forgery beneath the cover of deceptive entries, may expose accountants to a liability in an indeterminate amount for an indeterminate time to an indeterminate class. The hazards of a business conducted on these terms are so extreme as to enkindle doubt whether a flaw may not exist in the implication of a duty that exposes to these consequences." Id. at 179, 174 N.E. at 444.
Moreover,
"` very one making a promise having the quality of a contract will be under a duty to the promisee by virtue of the promise, but under another duty, apart from contract, to an indefinite number of potential beneficiaries when performance has begun. The assumption of one relation will mean involuntary assumption of a series of new relations, inescapably hooked together.'" Id. at 189, 174 N.E. at 448, quoting Moch Co. v. Rensselaer Water Co., 247 N.Y. 160, 168, 159 N.E. 896, 899 (1928).
And the indeterminate or general nature of the beneficiaries of a promise affect the remedy that is available, even when there is a trend away from the strict enforcement of privity:
"Even in the [field of contract law] . . . the remedy is narrower where the beneficiaries of the promise are indeterminate or general. Something more must then appear than an intention that the promise shall redound to the benefit of the public or to that of a class of indefinite extension. The promise must be such as to `bespeak the assumption of a duty to make reparation directly to the individual members of the public if the benefit is lost.'" Id. at 181, 174 N.E. at 445, quoting Moch Co. v. Rensselaer Water Co., 247 N.Y. at 164, 159 N.E. at 897.
No such indeterminate or general beneficiaries were involved in Glanzer, rather known and foreseeable ones:
"Here was something more than the rendition of a service in the expectation that the one who ordered the certificate would use it thereafter in the operation of his business as occasion might require. Here was a case where the transmission of the certificate to another was not merely one possibility among many but the `end and aim of the transaction,' as certain and immediate and deliberately willed as if a husband were to order a gown to be delivered to his wife, or a telegraph company, contracting with the sender of a message, were to telegraph it wrongly to the damage of the person expected to receive it . . . The bond was so close as to approach that of privity, if not completely one with it. Not so in the case at hand. No one would be likely to urge that there was a contractual relation, or even one approaching it, at the root of any duty that was owing from the defendants now before us to the indeterminate class of persons who, presently or in the future, might deal with the Stern company in reliance on the audit." Id. at 182-83, 174 N.E. at 445-46. Thus, in Glanzer the plaintiffs' identity, or at least the class in which they belonged, and that they were going to use, and therefore rely on, the information, was actually known to the defendant, while in Ultramares, other than as a member of the public, the defendant had no relationship at all with the plaintiff that provided the defendant with any information bearing on its liability for negligence. In that regard, it is important to note that the requirement of "contractual relation, or even one appr
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Maryland Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|