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P a g e
Also known as the "Paisley snail or "snail in the bottle" case, the facts involved Mrs
Donoghue drinking a bottle of
n a café i
A dead
snail was in the bottle. She fell ill, and she sued the ginger beer manufacturer, Mr
Stevenson. The House of Lords held that the manufacturer owed a duty of care to her,
which was breached, because it was reasonably foreseeable that failure to ensure the
product's safety would lead to harm of consumers.
Edwards v National Coal Board [1949] – meaning of ‘reasonably practicable’
Mr Edwards died in an accident after the supporting structure for the mine roadway
gave way. The National Coal Board argued that it was too expensive to shore up every
roadway in all of the mines.
The case turned when it was decided that it was not 'all of the roadways' that needed
shoring up; just the ones that required it. In essence this established the need to carry
out
to establish the cost, time and trouble to mitigate a risk balanced
against the risk and the severity of any harm it might cause
Asquith stated in his judgment:
“
Reasonably practicable is a narrower term than ‘physically possible’ and implies
that a computation must be made... in which the quantum of risk is placed in one
scale and the sacrifice involved in the measures necessary for averting the risk
(
whether in time, trouble or money) is placed in the other and that, if it be shown
that there is a great disproportion between them – the risk being insignificant in
relation to the sacrifice – the person upon whom the obligation is imposed
discharges the onus which is upon him.
General Cleaning Contractor’s v Christmas [1952] – employer’s duty to provide a
safe system of work
General Cleaning Contractors Ld -v- Christmas
It is the duty of the employer to consider the situation, devise a suitable system and
instruct his employees what they must do and to provide appropriate equipment. In
leaving it to individual workmen to take precautions against an obvious danger, the
employers had failed to discharge their duty to provide a reasonably safe system of
work.
Lord Oaksey said: ‘In my opinion, it is the duty of an employer to give such general
safety instructions as a reasonably careful employer who has considered the problem
presented by the work would give to his workmen. It is, I think, well known to
employers, and there is evidence in this case that it was well known to the appellants,
that their workpeople are very frequently, if not habitually, careless about the risks
which their work may involve. It is, in my opinion, for that very reason that the common
law demands that employers should take reasonable care to lay down a reasonably safe
system of work. Employers are not exempted from this duty by the fact that their men
