Donoghue v Stevenson

Donoghue is a UK House of Lords decision adopted as the foundation of Canadian negligence. Lord Atkin's neighbour principle — you must take reasonable care to avoid acts you can reasonably foresee would injure your neighbour — established that a manufacturer owes a duty of care to the ultimate consumer.

Mrs. Donoghue drank ginger beer bought for her by a friend at a Paisley café. The opaque bottle, allegedly, contained a decomposed snail. She suffered illness and sued the manufacturer, Stevenson, in negligence — there was no contract.

Does a manufacturer owe a duty of care in negligence to the ultimate consumer of their product?

Yes. Action allowed to proceed.

One must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which one can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure one's neighbour. Neighbours are persons so closely and directly affected by one's act that one ought reasonably to have them in contemplation. A manufacturer who puts a product into the hands of an ultimate consumer with no reasonable possibility of intermediate examination owes a duty to take reasonable care.

Lord Atkin grounded the principle in the biblical injunction "love thy neighbour", recast as a legal proposition. Lord Macmillan's "the categories of negligence are never closed" confirmed that the duty extends beyond established privity-based categories.

Adopted in Canada through the Anns/Cooper line. The neighbour principle is the spine of modern duty of care analysis. Donoghue is taught in every Canadian first-year tort class. Cooper v Hobart is its modern Canadian articulation.

Donoghue v Stevenson, [1932] AC 562, [1932] UKHL 100.

Lord Buckmaster, Lord Atkin, Lord Tomlin, Lord Thankerton, Lord Macmillan