Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] | Doctrine of Negligence | Law of Tort | Case Summary
Channel: Hasibul Haque Imon
Date: 2020-09-10

Case Summary of Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] 

INTRODUCTION
Donoghue, a Scottish dispute, is a famous case in English law which was instrumental in shaping the law of tort and the doctrine of negligence in particular.

FACTS
On August 26 1928, Mrs Donoghue’s friend bought her a ginger-beer from Wellmeadow Café1 in Paisley. She consumed about half of the bottle, which was made of dark opaque glass, when the remainder of the contents was poured into a tumbler. At this point, the decomposed remains of a snail floated out causing her alleged shock and severe gastro-enteritis.

Mrs Donoghue was not able to claim through breach of warranty of a contract: she was not party to any contract. Therefore, she issued proceedings against Stevenson, the manufacture, which snaked its way up to the House of Lords.

ISSUES
The question for the HoL was if the manufacturer owed Mrs Donoghue a duty of care in the absence of contractual relations contrary to established case law.2 Donoghue was effectively a test case to determine if she had a cause of action, not if she was owed compensation for any damages suffered.

The law of negligence at the time was very narrow and was invoked only if there was some established contractual relationship. An earlier case3, involving two children and floating mice, held that:

Absent a contract, a manufacturer owed no duty of care to a consumer when putting a product on the market except:
If the manufacturer was aware that the product was dangerous because of a defect and it was concealed from the consumer (i.e., fraud);4 or
The product was danger per se and failed to warn the consumer of this.5
Unlike Mullen, which stopped at the Court of Session, Mrs Donoghue took her case to the HoL.

DECISION/OUTCOME
The HoL found for Mrs Donoghue with the leading judgment delivered by Lord Atkin in a 3-2 majority with Buckmaster L and Tomlin L dissenting. The ratio decidendi of the case is not straightforward. Indeed, it could be interpreted as narrow as to establish a duty not to sell opaque bottles of ginger-beer, containing the decomposed remains of a dead snail, to Scottish widows.6

Read more broadly, the decision has several components: first, negligence is distinct and separate in tort; second, there does not need to be a contractual relationship for a duty to be established; third, manufacturers owe a duty to the consumers who they intend to use their product.7

However, the primary outcome of Donoghue, and what it is best known for, is the further development of the neighbour principle by Lord Atkin, who said:8

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 which are called in question.

Mrs Donoghue had proved her averments that she had a cause of action in law.

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