The appellant company were held not liable for injuries caused by a defective brake on a coal wagon conveyed by the railway company to a point in the transit where their contract ended, and where the wagons were taken over for haulage for the last part of the journey by a second railway company, on which part the accident happened. It was held that the first railway company were under no duty to the injured workmen to examine the wagon for defects at the end of their contractual haulage. There was ample opportunity for inspection by the second railway company. The relations were not proximate.
The court discussed responsibility for a thing dangerous in itself, as ‘an instrument noxious or dangerous in itself which might produce an accident from the mere handling of it.’
Judges:
Lord Shand
Citations:
[1898] AC 216
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Donoghue (or M’Alister) v Stevenson HL 26-May-1932
Decomposed Snail in Ginger Beer Bottle – Liability
The appellant drank from a bottle of ginger beer manufactured by the defendant. She suffered injury when she found a half decomposed snail in the liquid. The glass was opaque and the snail could not be seen. The drink had been bought for her by a . .
Cited – Dominion Natural Gas Co Ltd v Collins 1909
The defendants had installed a gas apparatus to provide natural gas on the premises of a railway company. They had installed a regulator to control the pressure and their men negligently made an escape-valve discharge into the building instead of . .
Cited – Hodge and Sons v Anglo-American Oil Co 1922
The plaintiffs, London barge repairers claimed after an explosion on the Anglo-American Oil Company’s oil tank barge Warwick, when she was being repaired by the plaintiffs, to whom she had been sent for that purpose by the defendants. As a result of . .
Cited – McTear v Imperial Tobacco Ltd OHCS 31-May-2005
The pursuer sought damages after her husband’s death from lung cancer. She said that the defenders were negligent in having continued to sell him cigarettes knowing that they would cause this.
Held: The action failed. The plaintiff had not . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Negligence, Transport
Updated: 30 April 2022; Ref: scu.197991