Ginger Beer Case Study

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A Sunday of 26th May 1932, Ms. Donoghue sat in a café with a friend. The friend ordered and paid for some ginger beer, which came in a bottle made from dark opaque glass. Ms Donoghue drank some of the contents then her friend proceeded to pour the remainder of the contents of the bottle into the tumbler when a snail, which was beginning to rot, floated out of the bottle. As a result of the sickening sight of the snail, and of impurities in the ginger-beer, Ms Donoghue suffered from shock and severe gastro-enteritis. She argued that the ginger-beer was manufactured by the defendant Mr. Stevenson to be sold as a drink to the public; that it was bottled with a label bearing his name and that the bottles were then sealed with a metal cap by the …show more content…

In fact Mr. Stevenson, as the manufacturer of a product intended for consumption added in one container that has prevented the inspection, had a duty about consumers of this article to make sure that there was nothing harmful in the products. So, having neglected this duty, they are then responsible for any damages caused by such negligence. This case has been around the world, as did the house of the Lords as the protagonist, and Law Lords sided with Ms. Donoghue. It was the speech of Lord Atkins that was most influential. In deciding the dispute: it states that “The moral rule that you have to love your neighbor becomes in law, you must not injure your neighbor; [...] Who, then, in law is my neighbor? The answer seems to be persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought to have them in contemplation […] when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions which are called in question” (Donoghue v. Stevenson 1932 AC …show more content…

This function is performed, as regards the tort of negligence, from a search operation of the proximity switch, which determines the cases in which the defendant will be responsible for having caused with a negligent conduct a predictable damage. The flexibility of the canon of proximity, which in some ways has been a time of criticism of it, makes clear the matrix metalegal : was underlined as you face first reference to "something is not conceptual and

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