History
A famous early case in negligence per se is Gorris v. Scott, an 1874 Court of Exchequer case that established that the harm the statute is intended to prevent must be of the kind that the statute was intended to prevent. Gorris involved a shipment of sheep that was washed overboard but would not have been washed overboard had the shipowner complied with the regulations established pursuant to the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act 1869, which required that livestock be transported in pens to segregate potentially-infected animal populations from uninfected ones. Chief Baron Fitzroy Kelly held that as the statute was intended to prevent the spread of disease, rather than the loss of livestock in transit, the plaintiff could not claim negligence per se.
A subsequent New York Court of Appeals case, Martin v. Herzog, penned by Judge Benjamin N. Cardozo, first presented the notion that negligence per se could be absolute evidence of negligence in certain cases.
Read more about this topic: Negligence Per Se
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