What We Talk About When We Talk About the Duty of Care in Negligence Law: The Utah Supreme Court Sets an Example in Boynton v. Kennecott Utah Copper

Abstract

Every day, state common law courts define the duty of care in negligence law. There is no formula for how courts should determine duty. Yet when judges are charged with important decisions about whether to open or shut the courthouse doors to whole categories of claimants, judges need some framework for decision. This article commends as an exemplar, the Utah Supreme Court’s decision in Boynton v. Kennicott Utah Copper, a take-home asbestos exposure case. The power of Boynton is not only the answer it provides, but also the coherent framework for analysis that Justice Constandinos Himonas’ opinion sets forth. The opinion’s framework incorporates established principles as well as important tort policies such as harm prevention. Boynton’s structure at once provides the stability and consistency of precedent befitting common law adjudication while also incorporating the public policy and pragmatic concerns that have long guided tort law’s development. Boynton’s framework achieves a similar result to the one in the Third Restatement—creating duty and no-duty rules with possibility of exception based on principle and policy factors. However, Boynton does so through traditional terminology that has aquired meaning through repeated historical application. Courts, scholars and students would be well advised to examine the Utah Supreme Court’s approach to duty analysis.