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A tort law doctrine holding that a defendant is liable for the full extent of harm caused to a victim, even if the victim was unusually fragile.
The eggshell skull rule — sometimes called the "thin skull rule" or "you take your victim as you find him" — is a principle of common law tort and criminal law providing that a wrongdoer is fully liable for all consequences flowing from their wrongful act, regardless of whether those consequences were magnified by a pre-existing vulnerability in the victim that the defendant could not have foreseen.
The classic illustration: if A negligently strikes B on the head, and B happens to have an unusually thin skull that causes death where an ordinary person would only have been bruised, A is liable for the death — not merely for the foreseeable bruise. The defendant cannot reduce damages by arguing the victim was abnormally susceptible.
The rule is most often traced in English law to Smith v. Leech Brain & Co. [1962] 2 QB 405, where an employee's burn from molten metal triggered a pre-cancerous condition leading to death; the employer was held liable for the full loss. In the United States, the doctrine is widely cited through Vosburg v. Putney, 80 Wis. 523 (1891), in which a schoolboy's minor kick aggravated a latent leg infection.
Key features:
The doctrine reflects a policy choice that wrongdoers, not innocent victims, should bear the risk of unusual vulnerability.
Yes. In most common law jurisdictions, a defendant in a homicide or assault case cannot escape liability by arguing the victim's pre-existing condition made the injury fatal or more severe than expected.
The eggshell skull rule makes a defendant liable for unforeseen severity caused by a latent vulnerability. The crumbling skull rule reduces damages where the victim's underlying condition would have caused decline regardless of the defendant's act.
Generally yes, once a recognizable psychiatric injury is established and some harm to the victim was foreseeable, though courts apply it more cautiously than for physical injury.