Abstract
This chapter is an attempt to look into connections between the Talmudic treatment of negligence and secular treatments. What follows is an attenuated and highly tentative introduction to this topic. A principle arrived at in Bava Kamma 52b is that “lo amrinan miggo.” A literal translation might be, “We do not say because.” The rough idea is this: We do not say that because you were negligent with respect to the foreseeable damage to one object, and your negligence caused unforeseeable damage to a second object, you are liable for the latter. The principle of lo amrinan miggo says that there is no liability. One example in the Gemara concerns a person who digs a pit in a public place and then covers it with material that is normally strong enough to withstand the weight of an ox but not a camel. This person is therefore negligent with respect to the foreseeable damage that could occur to a camel that breaks through the cover. What unforeseeably transpires, however, is that moisture that had been in the pit corrodes the cover so that it is no longer able to withstand the weight of an ox that steps on it. Had the cover been made of material strong enough to withstand the weight of a camel, the moisture would not have caused it to weaken to that extent. This person’s negligence with respect to the foreseeable damage to a camel causes the unforeseeable damage to the ox in the sense that, had he not been negligent, the damage would not have occurred. The miggo principle exempts the person from liability.