“Defendants liable if type of harm foreseeable, even if manner unforeseeable”
Post Office employees left a manhole uncovered with paraffin lamps around it. An 8-year-old boy took a lamp down the manhole, which fell and caused a violent explosion due to vaporised paraffin, severely burning the child when he was blown out of the manhole.
Whether the Post Office was liable for injuries caused in an unforeseeable manner, when the type of harm (burns from the lamp) was foreseeable but not the mechanism (explosion and being blown from the manhole).
The House of Lords held the Post Office liable. The defendants were responsible for the boy's injuries as burns were a foreseeable consequence of the breach of duty, even though the exact mechanism of injury was not foreseeable.
This case established an important principle in negligence law regarding remoteness of damage, clarifying that liability extends to foreseeable types of harm regardless of the unforeseeable manner of occurrence.
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OSCOLA Citation
Hughes v Lord Advocate [1963] AC 837 (HL)
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