Donoghue v Stevenson

Facts

May Donoghue was given a bottle of ginger beer by a friend at the Wellmeadow Café in Paisley. The bottle was opaque, and she had drunk most of it before, on pouring out the remainder, the partly decomposed remains of a snail emerged. Mrs Donoghue suffered shock and gastroenteritis. She had no contract with the café, since her friend had bought the drink, and so could not sue in contract. She sued the manufacturer, David Stevenson, in negligence.

Issue

In the absence of any contractual relationship, did the manufacturer of a product owe a duty of care to the ultimate consumer?

Decision

By a 3–2 majority, the House of Lords held that the manufacturer did owe such a duty. Lord Atkin's speech contains the celebrated neighbour 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 reasonably to have them in contemplation as being so affected when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions which are called in question.

Significance

Donoghue is the cornerstone of the modern law of negligence. The neighbour principle remains the conceptual foundation of duty of care, though the test was refined and tightened by Caparo Industries plc v Dickman [1990] 2 AC 605, which moved to a tripartite test of foreseeability, proximity, and the fair-just-reasonable enquiry. Without Donoghue there is no recognisable tort of negligence as we know it. With it, the law took on responsibility for a vastly larger sphere of harm than the writs and forms of action had previously allowed.