for the Second Department, the state's intermediate appeals court. In its briefs before the Appellate Division, the LIRR argued that the verdict had been contrary to the law and the evidence. It stressed that it had no foreknowledge that the package was dangerous, and that no law required it to search the contents of passenger luggage. The brief stated that given this, there was no negligence in helping a man make a train, and even if there was, that negligence was not the proximate cause of Palsgraf's injuries. Wood, for Palsgraf, argued that the jury verdict finding negligence was supported by undisputed facts, and should not be questioned by the appellate courts. The plaintiff's brief also suggested that the failure of the railroad to call as witnesses the employees who had aided the man should decide any inferences of negligence against it. Wood deemed the trainmen guilty of a "dereliction of duty", misconduct that was the proximate cause of Palsgraf's injuries. The lawyers argued the case before the Appellate Division in Brooklyn on October 21, 1927. On December 9, the Appellate Division affirmed the trial court's judgment, 3–2. Albert H. F. Seeger wrote the majority opinion for the five justices hearing the case, and was joined by Justices William F. Hagarty and William B. Carswell. Seeger had been born in Stuttgart and came to the United States as a child; he had been elected to the Supreme Court in 1917 and was elevated to the Appellate Division by Governor Al Smith in 1926. Aged 68 at the time of Palsgraf, he could serve only two more years before mandatory retirement. Justice Seeger ruled that the finding of negligence by the jury was supported by the evidence, and speculated that the jury might have found that helping a passenger board a moving train was a negligent act. He wrote that while the set of facts might be novel, the case was no different in principle from well-known court decisions on causation, such as the Squib case, in which an explosive (a squib) was lit and thrown, then was hurled away repeatedly by people not wanting to be hurt until it exploded near the plaintiff, injuring him; his suit against the man who had set the squib in motion was upheld. The majority also focused on the high degree of duty of care that the LIRR owed to Palsgraf, one of its