The case at a glance

Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562 (House of Lords). Holding: a manufacturer owes a duty of care to the ultimate consumer of its products; foundation of the modern tort of negligence.

The story

On an August evening in 1928, in the Wellmeadow Café in Paisley, Scotland, Mrs May Donoghue drank ginger beer that a friend had bought for her. The bottle was opaque; when the remainder was poured out, what was said to be the decomposed remains of a snail floated into the tumbler. Mrs Donoghue later complained of gastro-enteritis and shock. Her legal problem was elegant and brutal: the friend had the contract with the café but suffered no harm; Mrs Donoghue suffered the harm but had no contract with anyone. If liability lived only in contract, she had no claim at all.

The question

Does a manufacturer of products owe any duty, outside contract, to the person who ultimately consumes them?

The decision

By a bare majority, the House of Lords said yes. Lord Atkin’s speech gave the common law its most quoted passage: the biblical command to love one’s neighbour becomes, in law, the duty not to injure one’s neighbour — and one’s neighbours are those so closely and directly affected by one’s acts that one ought reasonably to have them in contemplation. A manufacturer who sends out products in sealed containers, intending them to reach consumers with no opportunity for intermediate inspection, owes those consumers reasonable care.

Why it still matters

Donoghue v Stevenson freed negligence from the privity of contract and supplied the organising principle from which duties of care have grown for nearly a century — in Dhaka and Delhi as much as in London. A pleasing footnote for students: it was never proved at trial that the snail existed, for the case settled after the Lords decided the point of law. The common law’s most important animal may never have been there at all.