Setting a precedent – A level law topic area: Judicial Precedent 

Here is an interesting case on the law of Negligence, which became the precedent for all other courts to follow.

Precedent is when a court higher in the court system eg the Court of Appeal, makes a decision that sets a precedent. All other courts have to follow it.

Civil case study: Donoghue-v-Stevenson(1932)

Also known as the “Paisley Snail” or “Snail in the Bottle” case. On 26th August 1928, Mrs May Donoghue went to a Café in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland. Her friend ordered a pear and ice for herself and a ‘Scotsman ice cream float’, a mix of ice cream and ginger beer for Mrs Donoghue. The owner of the café brought over a tumbler of ice cream and poured ginger beer on it from a brown and opaque bottle labelled “D. Stevenson, Glen Lane, Paisley”. 

Mrs Donoghue drank some of the ice cream float. When her friend poured the remaining ginger beer into the tumbler, a decomposed snail also floated out of the bottle. Mrs Donoghue claimed that she felt ill from this sight, complaining of abdominal pain. According to her later statements of facts, she was required to consult a doctor on 29th August and was admitted to Glasgow Royal Infirmary for “emergency treatment”. She was subsequently diagnosed with severe gastroenteritis and shock. The ginger beer had been manufactured by David Stevenson, who ran a company producing both ginger beer and lemonade.  

Mrs Donoghue decided to sue the ginger beer manufacturer, Mr Stevenson (Not the café owner). The case went through the Scottish legal system first and ended up being appealed to the House of Lords. It held that the manufacturer owed a duty of care to her. This had been breached because it was reasonably foreseeable that failure to ensure the product’s safety would lead to harm to consumers. (Duty of care means the manufacturer must not be careless when keeping all the manufacturing equipment safe and clean, so it will only supply uncontaminated products).

Before Donoghue-v-Stevenson, liability for personal injury in negligence, depended on showing physical damage inflicted on a person. Being made ill by consuming a noxious substance did not qualify. 

The case ended up at the highest court in the UK, the House of Lords where it was decided that Mrs Donoghue should be awarded compensation for her injury from drinking the ginger beer with the remains of a snail in it. It was decided that the manufacturer owed all its customers a duty of care, to provide drinks that were safe and not contaminated and the manufacturer had been negligent in failing to do this. 

The lead Judge in the case, Lord Atkin, made this statement as part of his judgment: ‘The rule that you are to love your neighbour becomes in law you must not injure your neighbour; and the lawyer’s question ‘You 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 my contemplation as being so affected when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions which are called into question’.

Donoghue-v-Stevenson set a precedent that allowed negligence to become part of English law. All negligence cases have followed this decision.

Adrian Ruffhead