Donoghue V Stevenson Case Summary

In Common law the High Court has developed a number of approaches over the years which involved various arrangements of concepts and policies for determining duty of care. However neither of them has a satisfactory result in negligence litigation. In 1932 Lord Atkin developed ‘ principle of Neighbourhood’ in the case of Donoghue v Stevenson [1932]. The case facts of Donoghue involved Mrs. Donoghue drinking a bottle of ginger beer and finding a dead snail in the bottle. After drinking the beer she suffers from gastroenteritis and she sued the beer manufacturer, Mr.Stevenson. In Relation to this, Lord Atkin developed the principle which suggested that a reasonable care must be taken to avoid the acts or omissions which are reasonably foreseeable to injure your neighbour. According to

Additionally even though the second stage successfully limits the wideness of neighbour principle ,It is still considered to be too wide as the ‘policy considerations’’ itself is a wide concept. Therefore, due to its expansionist tendencies and fear of releasing the floodgates the House of Lords overruled Anns in Caparo v Dickman [1990] and Lord Bridge of Harwich established the guideline for imposing duty of care. Under the ingredients of Caparo the claimant must establish that the damage done by the defendant was reasonably foreseeable and there was sufficient proximity amongst them. Lastly, the situation must be one that the court considers it fair, just and reasonable to impose a duty of care under the given circumstances’. Furthermore, Lord Bridge stated that in addition to foreseeability which Anns mainly focused on, the relationship of proximity or neighborhood is also a necessary element of imposing duty of