Making the Manufacturer Liable

Donoghue v Stevenson (1932). This is a key case even for today’s tort law in England and Scotland. A consumer bought a ginger beer for her friend. It was alleged that the last thing to come out of the bottle after Mrs Donoghue had drunk the contents was not the dregs, but a decomposing snail. The difficulty was the victim was not the purchaser, so contract law couldn’t help against the producer. Compensation from the producer would have to be founded in tort, and this involved two choices: create a simple, new, one-off duty of care on producers to look after ultimate consumers, or make duties of care easier to create for all situations. In the end, it was the second, general “neighbour principle” (i.e. look after your neighbour) that won out, but it took about 15 years before the law was certain on this!