Negligence has changed since Donoghue v Stevenson—and not for the better, argues Jon Holbrook
Seventy-five years ago the House of Lords heard M’Alister (or Donoghue) v Stevenson [1932] AC 562, [1932] All ER Rep 1. Thousands of law students will forever remember the case involving the snail and the bottle of ginger beer which gave birth to the law of negligence. Donoghue put the law of negligence onto a principled footing by establishing that: “You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour.” Central to this principle was the notion of fault or, as their lordships put it, “taking reasonable care”.
Donoghue was a ground-breaking decision, possibly one of the most important that the House of Lords has ever given.
The court took five months to consider its judgment amid talk of some brotherly arm-twisting that resulted in a 3:2 decision. The minority position was informed by a fear of opening the floodgates. In fact Donoghue did not open the floodgates for many decades as judges applied the notion of negligence appropriately.
