## Facts

- Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company operated a train that derailed adjacent to, and physically damaged, the Motor Coils Manufacturing Company plant.
- The derailment disrupted and curtailed Motor Coils’ production for a period of time.
- Albert J. Aikens and other Motor Coils employees alleged they lost work opportunities and wages due to the production shutdown or reduction.
- The employees alleged the derailment resulted from the railroad’s negligence and that their lost wages were proximately caused by that negligence.
- The employees did not allege personal injury.
- The employees did not allege damage to property they owned or possessed; the only physical damage alleged was to Motor Coils’ property.
- The claimed harm was purely economic and derived from the employees’ relationship to the property owner (their employer), not from direct physical harm to the employees or their property.

## Issues

1. Whether employees who suffer only lost wages due to negligent damage to their employer’s property, without personal injury or property damage to themselves, may recover in negligence from the alleged tortfeasor.
2. Whether Pennsylvania negligence law recognizes a duty to avoid purely “relational” economic loss to an indeterminate class of persons economically affected by physical damage to another’s property.

## Decision

- The Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed judgment on the pleadings for the railroad.
- The court held the employees failed to state a cognizable negligence claim because they alleged only economic loss unaccompanied by personal injury or property damage to a proprietary interest of their own.
- The court treated the wage losses as relational and too remote from the negligent act to permit recovery in tort.
- The court emphasized policy limits on negligence liability, rejecting an approach that would extend liability to broad ripple-effect economic harms.

## Legal Principles

- In negligence, recovery for unintended harm generally requires physical injury to the plaintiff’s person or physical damage to property in which the plaintiff has a proprietary interest.
- Purely economic loss, without accompanying personal injury or property damage to the plaintiff, is not ordinarily recoverable in negligence.
- Economic losses suffered because of a plaintiff’s relationship with an injured property owner (relational economic loss) are typically considered too remote to support negligence liability.
- Limiting negligence liability serves to avoid exposing defendants to liability to an indeterminate class of claimants for an indeterminate amount and time when an accident disrupts commercial activity.
- Physical damage to a third party’s property (such as an employer’s facility) may support that property owner’s claim, but it does not, by itself, create a negligence claim for employees seeking only lost wages.

## Conclusion

The court refused to extend negligence liability to employees seeking lost wages resulting from negligent damage to their employer’s plant, holding that Pennsylvania law bars recovery for purely economic, relational losses absent personal injury or property damage to the plaintiffs’ own proprietary interests.


Aikens v. Balt. & Ohio R.R. Co., 348 Pa. Super. 17, 501 A.2d 277 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1985)