Opinion ID: 1372176
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Regardless of either special relationship or the distinction between affirmative conduct and failure to act, the test is one of foreseeability.

Text: In recent years probably most of the decisions of this court have not analyzed the problem of duty in negligence cases in terms of either special relationships or in terms of affirmative conduct vs. failure to act, but in terms of foreseeability. Thus, in Stewart v. Jefferson Plywood Co., 255 Or. 603, 608-9, 469 P.2d 783 (1970), Justice O'Connell quoted with approval from 1 Harper & James, The Law of Torts, supra, the statement that: `   liability is confined to harms actually resulting that are of the general kind to be anticipated from the conduct and, for the same reason, liability is confined to situations in which the person harmed is one of the general class threatened.' Justice O'Connell then went on (at 609, 469 P.2d at 786) to state that: This idea of limiting liability to that which can be anticipated is formulated into the foreseeability test for negligence, which states that one is negligent only if he, as an ordinary reasonable person, ought reasonably to foresee that he will expose another to an unreasonable risk of harm.    (Emphasis added) This analysis has been subsequently approved by this court in more recent cases. See, e.g., Gunn v. Hi-C-Home, Inc., 260 Or. 404, 407-8, 490 P.2d 999 (1971); Allen v. Shiroma/Leathers, 266 Or. 567, 514 P.2d 545 (1973); Sabolish v. Playland Shows, 267 Or. 339, 341, 516 P.2d 1271 (1973); Kirtland v. Davis, 276 Or. 613, 615-16, 555 P.2d 1262 (1976), and Connolly v. Bressler, 283 Or. 265, 268, 583 P.2d 540 (1978). This brings us to the second contention by defendants  that the stabbing of plaintiff's decedent by Thompson was not foreseeable, in that it occurred through a concatenation of highly unusual circumstances, and the contention by Justice Peterson that there must be, prospectively, a recognizable high degree of risk of harm from the future misconduct of a third person.