Cognitive Scaffold

Preparing your thinking workspace

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MENTAL MODEL · M5797

Eggshell Skull Rule

Eggshell Skull Rule
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Updated 2026-08-05

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INTRODUCTION

English translation pending.

CORE DEFINITION

A principle of tort law stating that a defendant must take the victim as they find them, so liability covers all resulting damage even if a normal person would have suffered far less. An unforeseeable vulnerability, such as a thin skull or a bleeding disorder, does not reduce the defendant's responsibility for the harm their conduct caused. The core claim is that foreseeability of the extent of damage is irrelevant once the wrongful act is established. The qualification is that the rule addresses causation of harm rather than the wrongfulness of the act itself.

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

psychology

Reduce cognitive load

- Use Worst-Case Assumption: Assume some users or conditions will be far more vulnerable than the average case. - Use Liability Mapping: Ask what damage follows if your product is used by the most fragile plausible user. - Use Warning Design: Either prevent the extreme use case or warn about it explicitly, since not expecting it is no excuse.

anchor

Anchor fast decisions

Responsibility attaches to the act that caused harm, not to the statistical typicality of the consequence, so the severity of the outcome does not have to be foreseeable for liability to attach. Because a small push can be fatal to an unusually fragile person, the actor bears the actual result rather than a notional average result. The rule pushes the risk of unusual vulnerability onto whoever created the hazard.

MINIMUM ACTION

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Source support: Explicit

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    en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skullZH · Explicit
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