Cases Flashcards
Duty of Care- Donoghue v. Stevenson (1932)
the claimant, May Donoghue, had visited a café with a friend who had bought her a bottle of ginger beer. She drank some of this but when she poured out more, a decomposed snail emerged from the bottle. Although she was only mildly ill as a result, she was persuaded to sue. She could not sue the café proprietor for breach of contract because she did not buy it. Therefore, she sued the manufacturers in negligence, and succeeded.
The general principle which the case established, known as the ‘neighbour principle’ or ‘neighbour test’. The rule that you are to love your neighbour becomes in law, you must not injure your neighbour;
Test for Remoteness- Overseas Tankship (UK) Ltd v. Mort’s Dock and Engineering Co. Ltd (1961) ( ‘The Wagon Mound’)
The facts were that men employed by the defendants negligently spilt fuel oil into Sydney Harbour. The oil mixed with cotton waste and other debris and spread to the claimant’s wharf where welding operations were causing sparks to fall into the water. The sparks caused the oil to ignite, setting fire to the claimant’s wharf.
Although the fire was a direct result of the defendant’s negligence (which satisfied the ‘old test’), the Court held that the damage was too remote because it was of a type which was not reasonably foreseeable. At the time, apparently, it was not known that oil could catch fire in this way.
The defendants owed a duty of care to the claimants in The Wagon Mound case because some damage was foreseeable (perhaps contamination by the oil), but the type of damage which did occur was not foreseeable. Therefore, it was too remote
Thin skull’ rule: Smith v. Leech Brain and Co. Ltd (1961)
In this case, a worker had pre-malignant cancer of the lip which was activated when a blob of molten metal struck him through the negligence of a fellow employee, and he died of the disease. Although death from such an apparently trivial injury was quite unforeseeable, the employers were fully liable. Cases such as this are an exception to the general rule that no claim lies for damage which is not foreseeable.
Remoteness of damage: Abouzaid v. Mothercare (UK) Ltd (2001)
A 12-year-old boy was left blind in his left eye after attempting to attach a sleeping bag to a pushchair. The sleeping bag had two elasticated straps and, when the boy attempted to buckle the straps together, they slipped from his grasp. The strap with the metal buckle recoiled and hit his left eye.
The boy sued the defendants who sold the sleeping bag through their stores for compensation. His argument that the defendants were negligent was dismissed. This was on the basis that a reasonable person in the position of the defendants would not have realised there was a real risk that people like the claimant might suffer some form of physical injury as a result of the sleeping bag being designed the way it was. Before the claimant was injured, there was no reason for anyone to think that someone using the sleeping bag could suffer this kind of accident.
The claim did, however, ultimately succeed on the basis of product liability under the Consumer Protection Act 1987. The court accepted that there was a defect in the product in this case as no warning or instructions were included in the product by the manufacturer as to the incident occurred
Negligent misstatements- Hedley Byrne v. Heller and Partners(1963)
This case established, for the first time, that liability could arise in tort for negligent misstatement. As we shall see, it also established a new category of liability in tort for pure economic loss.
The facts were that the claimants had contacted the defendants, who were bankers to a firm with which they were about to do business, for a reference. The defendants gave a good reference concerning the firm’s credit-worthiness, although the document was headed by the words ‘Without Responsibility’ – a disclaimer of liability. The claimants acted on this misleading report (the firm was in trouble) and gave substantial credit, so that they lost heavily when the firm went into liquidation. They sued the defendants and the House of Lords held that the bankers would have been liable in negligence if they had not expressly disclaimed liability.
Rylands v. Fletcher (1868)- strict liability
the defendant employed independent contractors to
construct a reservoir on his land to supply water to his mill. In the course of construction, the contractors came across some disused mine shafts filled with earth which, unknown to the defendant and the contractors, connected to the claimant’s mine. After the work was
completed, and the reservoir filled, one of the shafts gave way and water burst through the old workings and flooded the claimant’s colliery. It was found as a fact that the defendant had not been negligent. Nevertheless, the defendant was held liable
Beresford v. Royal Insurance Co. Ltd (1938)- illegal contracts -close connection with crime
the insured committed suicide, intending that the policy money be used to pay off his heavy debts, at a time when suicide was a criminal offence. It was held that the policy did cover suicide and that the insurers could extend the policy to cover acts of wilful misconduct if they wished. Nevertheless, the court held that public policy (the second principle) would prevent a recovery being made, because payment would allow the insured a ‘benefit’ from his criminal act in the sense that his estate would be freed from debts.
Proximate cause- Leyland Shipping v. Norwich Union Fire Insurance Society Ltd (1918).
a ship that was damaged by a torpedo (excluded as a war risk) which, after reaching the port of Le Havre, sank while trying to move to an outer berth during a storm (insured as a peril of the sea).
The House of Lords held that the cause needed to be ‘proximate in efficiency’. As a result, the torpedo was treated as the proximate cause, because the damage caused had been effective throughout
Proximate cause, remote causes-Coxe v. Employers’ Liability Insurance Corporation Ltd (1916)
the insured was killed in the darkness by a train while inspecting sentries guarding a railway, the lights
having been extinguished under wartime regulations. War was excluded as an indirect as well as a direct cause and so the insurers were not liable, even though war was only a remote cause of the accident. The effect, therefore, was to widen the exclusion and
reduce the scope of the cover.
case on subrogation and indemnity- Castellain v. Preston (1883):
Here, the seller of a house recovered £330 from his insurer when the property was damaged by fire between the signing of the contract and the completion of the sale. The buyer afterwards completed the purchase and, despite the fire, paid the full price of £3,100, which he was bound to do by the terms of the contract. It was held that the seller had to pay to his insurer £330 from the money that he had received from the buyer, otherwise the seller would have ‘made a profit from his loss’.