Donoghue V Stevenson Full Case Pdf

Stevenson is often referred to as the ‘snail in the bottle’ caseDonoghue v. Stevenson, also known as the ‘snail in the bottle case’, is a significant case in Western law. The ruling in this case established the civil law tort of negligence and obliged businesses to observe a duty of care towards their customers.The events of the case took place in Paisley, Scotland in 1928.

• Donoghue V Stevenson Obiter Dicta
• Donoghue V Stevenson Full Case Pdf File

While attending a store, Ms May Donoghue was given a bottle of ginger beer, purchased for her by a friend. The bottle was later discovered to contain a decomposing snail. Since the bottle was not made of clear glass, Donoghue consumed most of its contents before she became aware of the snail.

She later fell ill and a physician diagnosed her with gastroenteritis.Donoghue subsequently took legal action against Mr David Stevenson, the manufacturer of the ginger beer. She lodged a writ in the Court of Sessions, Scotland’s highest civil court, seeking £500 damages.Donoghue could not sue Stevenson for breach of contract because she had not purchased the drink herself. Instead, Donoghue’s lawyers claimed that Stevenson had breached a duty of care to his consumers and caused injury through negligence. At the time, this area of civil law was largely untested. Stevenson’s lawyers challenged Donoghue’s action on the basis that no precedents existed for such a claim. They referred to an earlier action by Donoghue’s lawyer, Mullen v.

AG Barr, where a dead mouse was found in a bottle of soft drink; judges dismissed this action due to a lack of precedent.Donoghue’s initial action failed but she was granted leave to appeal to the House of Lords (which, at the time, had the judicial authority to hear appellate cases). The leading judgement, delivered by Lord Atkin in 1932, established that Stevenson was responsible for the well-being of individuals who consumed his products, given that they could not be inspected.The case was returned to the original court. Stevenson died before the case was finalised and Donoghue was awarded a reduced amount of damages from his estate.The outcomes of Donoghue v. Stevenson established several legal principles and precedents:Negligence. Firstly, the House of Lords ruling affirmed that negligence is a tort. A plaintiff can take civil action against a respondent if the respondent’s negligence causes the plaintiff injury or loss of property. Previously, the plaintiff had to demonstrate some contractual arrangement for negligence to be proven, such as the sale of an item or an agreement to provide a service.

Since Donoghue had not purchased the drink, she could prove no contractual arrangement with Stevenson – yet Lord Atkin’s judgement established that Stevenson was still responsible for the integrity of his product.Duty of care. Secondly, the case established that manufacturers have a duty of care to the end consumers or users of their products. According to Lord Atkin’s ratio decendi, “a manufacturer of products, which he sells to reach the ultimate consumer in the form in which they left him owes a duty to the consumer to take reasonable care”. This precedent has evolved and now forms the basis of laws that protect consumers from contaminated or faulty goods. These protections began as common law but many have since been codified in legislation, such as the Trade Practices Act (Commonwealth, 1974).Neighbour principle. Thirdly, the Donoghue v.

Stevenson case produced Lord Atkin’s controversial “neighbour principle”, which extended the tort of negligence beyond the tortfeasor and the immediate party. It raised the question of exactly which people might be affected by negligent actions. In Donoghue’s case, she had not purchased the ginger beer but had received it as a gift; she was a “neighbour” rather than a party to the contract. Atkin said of this principle: “You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour. Who, then, in law, is my neighbour? The answer seems to be persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought to have them in mind when I am considering these acts or omissions.”© lawgovpol.com 2018. Content on this page may not be republished or distributed without permission.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Donoghue v StevensonFull case nameDonoghue (or M’Alister) v StevensonDate decided26 May 1932Citations1932 AC 562, 1932 SC 31, 1932 All ER Rep 1Judges sitting, andDonoghue v Stevenson 1932 AC 562 was a decision of the that established the modern form of the of in, and in, by setting out general principles whereby one person would owe another person a. The case originated in, under Scots law, but the House of Lords determined that the English law of negligence and the Scots law of delict were identical. Donoghue v Stevenson is often referred to as the ' Paisley snail' or the ' snail in the bottle' case, and is one of the most famous decisions in British legal history. Progress of the caseThe lodged in the Court of Session on April 1929 alleged that May Donoghue had become ill with and gastroenteritis after drinking part of the contents of an opaque bottle of ginger beer, and David Stevenson, the manufacturer, 'owed her a duty to take reasonable care that ginger beer he manufactured, bottled, labelled and sealed, and invited her to buy, did not contain substances likely to cause her injury.' Donoghue claimed damages of.Counsel for the manufacturer denied that any such duty was owed, but in June 1930 the judge, ruled there was a case to answer. Stevenson appealed the ruling on a number of legal grounds, and the judges of the Inner House granted the appeal in November 1930, dismissing Donoghue's claim as having no legal basis following the authority of their earlier decision in Mullen v AG Barr. One of the judges said that 'the only difference between Donoghue's case and the mouse cases was the difference between a and a and in Scots law that meant no difference at all.'

Donoghue was allowed to appeal her case to the House of Lords but, whilst her legal team had agreed to provide their services free, she was unable to put up the needed to ensure the other side's costs were met should she lose in the Lords. However, as such security would not be required if she could gain the status of a, she petitioned the House of Lords, saying, 'I am very poor and am not worth in all the world the sum of five pounds, my wearing apparel and the subject matter of the said appeal.' A certificate of poverty signed by a minister and two elders of her church was attached to the petition, and the House of Lords agreed to grant her pauper status.Nine months after her petition was granted, and heard ' arguments.

Donoghue's counsel - George Morton and (later a ) - argued that a manufacturer who puts a product intended for human consumption onto the market in a form that precludes examination before its use is liable for any damage caused if he fails to exercise reasonable care to ensure it is fit for human consumption. Stevenson's counsel - (then and later a ), (later and then ), and T. Elder Jones - argued that there was no authority for such a principle of law.

JudgmentThe leading judgment was delivered on 26 May 1932. The most famous section was his explanation of the 'neighbour' principle, which was derived from the principle of 'loving your neighbour' in:There must be, and is, some general conception of relations giving rise to a duty of care, of which the particular cases found in the books are but instances.The rule that you are to love your neighbour becomes in law you must not injure your neighbour; and the lawyer's question: Who is my neighbour? Receives a restricted reply. You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour. Who, then, in law, is my neighbour?

The answer seems to be - persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought reasonably to have them in contemplation as being so affected when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions that are called in question. A manufacturer of products, which he sells in such a form as to show that he intends them to reach the ultimate consumer in the form in which they left him with no reasonable possibility of intermediate examination, and with knowledge that the absence of reasonable care in the preparation or putting up of products will result in an injury to the consumer's life or property, owes a duty to the consumer to take that reasonable care.Lords Thankerton and MacMillan did not support Lord Atkin's opinion, with Lords Buckmaster and Tomlin dissenting.

Buckmaster said it was impossible to accept such a wide proposition and (anticipating later 'floodgates' arguments) that it was difficult to see how trade could be carried on if Lord Atkin's principle was law. Buckmaster also opined, as did Lord Tomlin, that if such a duty of care existed it must cover the construction of every article, not just food: 'If one step, why not fifty?' Tomlin referred to the in 1842 caused by a defective axle, noting that, if Lord Atkin's principle were to be law, every injured party would be permitted to sue the axle manufacturer in such a case.The case was returned to Scotland for the Court of Session to apply the ruling to the facts of the case. In the event, David Stevenson died within a year of the decision and his executors settled out of court, for less than the original claim of £500. SignificanceAs has pointed out, Donoghue is an extension of a principle articulated by in an earlier case in the United States, which the judges referred to in Donoghue. MacPherson pioneered the tortious principle of a general, the starting point for any action in, though the principles were expressed within the context of product liability only.Donoghue is perhaps best known for the speech of and his 'neighbour' or 'neighbourhood' principle, where he applied to law so that, where an established duty of care does not already exist, a person will owe a duty of care not to injure those whom it can be reasonably foreseen would be affected by their acts or omissions.

Donoghue V Stevenson Obiter Dicta

The effect of this case was not only to provide individuals in the United Kingdom with a remedy against suppliers of consumer even where the had no with those individual or company, but to allow such individuals to bring negligence claims in any circumstance where the conditions for establishing a duty of care were met.In 1990, the House of Lords revised Lord Atkin's 'neighbour' principle to encompass public policy concerns articulated in (1990 1 All ER 568). The three-stage Caparo test for establishing a duty of care requires (i) foreseeability of damage, (ii) a relationship characterised by the law as one of proximity or neighbourhood and (iii) that the situation should be one in which the court considers it would be fair, just and reasonable that the law should impose a duty of given scope on one party for the benefit of the other. In other jurisdictions, such as, there is now a two-part test for novel fact situations, where the establishment of a duty must be balanced against applicable policy matters.Because of the significance of the case, in 1996 former Justice Martin Taylor, lawyer David Hay and filmmaker Michael Doherty produced an educational documentary of the case. Besides recreating the events leading up to the case and 'interviews' with actors playing the significant participants in the case, the production includes a 1995 interview with —then aged 96. This was one of the last interviews with Lord Denning, who died three years later. The film has been exhibited worldwide. See also.Notes.

Donoghue V Stevenson Full Case Pdf File

Ltd.: M'Gowan v. Barr & Co., 1929 S.C.

461, Lord Justice-Clerk at pg 469. Mullen v A.G. Barr & Co., 1929 S.C. 461.

Video site., BBC News, August 2003References. Adler v. Dickson 1954 1 W.L.R. 1482 at 1483 (Practice Note). Heuston, R.F.V.

Stevenson in Retrospect (1957), 20 M.L.R. 1. Linden, Allen M. 'The American Influence on Canadian Tort Law,' 50 UCLA L. 407, 414 (2002).External links., Martin R. Taylor QC, Scottish Council of Law Reporting.

also., based on the Police's 'message in a bottle'.