Cause and Harm Self-Quiz

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bart is a seventeen-year-old kid who lives in rural Springfield. Bart lives next door to Moe’s hops and barley farm. Having nothing to do one day, Bart goes to Krusty’s fireworks store and buys a bunch of bottle rockets. Bart brings the rockets home and begins setting them off in his backyard. One of the rockets flies out of control and lands in Moe’s barn. The barn, which is full of freshly harvested hops, ignites and burns to the ground. If Moe sues Bart for negligence, what argument gives him the best chance of winning?
Choice 1 Bart is old enough to be held accountable for his actions.
Choice 2 Fireworks are inherently dangerous.
Choice 3 The harm that Moe suffered was foreseeable.
Choice 4 Had Bart not set off the bottle rocket, Moe’s barn would not have burned down.
Jacko builds a fire in the woods. Five hundred feet away from Jacko, Wacko builds a fire as well. Neither Jacko nor Wacko takes the necessary precautions to make sure that his fire does not spread out of control. The fires burn toward each other and eventually join. The new big fire proceeds to burn Dot’s house to the ground. Each fire, individually, was not big enough to do any damage to Dot’s property, but together, the fire was big enough. In a suit against Jacko and Wacko for negligence, what is the most likely outcome?
Choice 1 Dot will lose, because neither Jacko’s nor Wacko’s fires, alone, would have destroyed her house.
Choice 2 Dot will lose, because the harm that she suffered was not foreseeable.
Choice 3 Dot will win, because her home was destroyed.
Choice 4 Dot will win, because the law will consider both Jacko and Wacko to be the actual cause of her harm.


Stan and Kyle challenge Kenny and Cartman to a drag race. Stan drives one car with Kyle in the passenger seat, and Cartman drives the other car with Kenny in the passenger seat. During the race, Stan loses control of his car and crashes into the front porch of Butters’s house. In a suit for negligence, against whom can Butters recover?
Choice 1 Butters can recover only against Stan, because Stan was the only one who inflicted damage on her.
Choice 2 Butters can recover against Stan and Kyle, because they were in the car that crashed through her house.
Choice 3 Butters can recover against all four participants in the drag race.
Choice 4 Butters cannot recover against anybody.
Cartman lives in rural Colorado where he owns a dairy farm. The farm occupies three hundred acres of land and is home to two thousand head of cattle. Kyle and Stan, two of Cartman’s friends, own a horse farm that is located next door to Cartman’s dairy farm. One day, Kyle and Stan decide to play a joke on Cartman. Kyle and Stan each get on a horse, and they go riding onto Cartman’s land shouting and shooting rifles into the air. Unfortunately, the gun shots scare the cattle, who begin to stampede. By the time the stampede is over, several buildings on Cartman’s farm are damaged and thousands of dollars worth of milking equipment has been destroyed. In a suit against Kyle and Stan for negligence, Cartman will most likely:
Choice 1 Recover from whichever one of them fired the shots that actually scared the cattle
Choice 2 Recover from both Kyle and Stan, so long as each of their actions alone would have scared the cattle
Choice 3 Lose, because the damage was caused by Cartman’s own animals
Choice 4 Lose, because a stampede was not a foreseeable result of Kyle and Stan’s actions
Kyle, Stan, Kenny and Cartman all go on a hunting trip together. Without telling the others, Cartman goes off and hides in some bushes in order to jump out and scare the others when they walk by. Kyle, Stan and Kenny all see some rustling in the bushes and, thinking that the rustling is being caused by an animal, they all shoot their shotguns into the bushes. Some of the buckshot hits Cartman, severely injuring him. In a suit against Kyle, Stan and Kenny, Cartman will have to prove whose gun the buckshot that hit him came from and then he will only be allowed to recover from that person:
True
False

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