The tort of negligence is never closed and is being developed through cases that come before the courts continuously. Lord Atkins and his fellow judges, while presiding over the Donoghue v Stevenson case in 1932, (Simpson, 2003:Lecture Notes) came up with a definition of what constituted negligence but failed to restrict its meaning to exclude trivial cases. It is obvious, tracing the history of negligence cases post- Donoghue v Stevenson, that alternative decisions needed to be made in many cases or new legislation brought in with clauses to regulate the principles of negligence.

Negligence is a tort and is therefore a category of law in which there is a dispute about the fault of one person as a contributing factor in the causal injury or damage to another person (Brown & Bailey, 2002:118). The development of the law of torts occurs on a basis of precedent in which like cases follow like decision (stare decisis) and are either binding or persuasive depending on which

Donoghue v Stevenson came before the House of Lords (the highest court of appeal in England at the time) and was critical in establishing the legal principles necessary to convict someone or find hem liable for negligence (Miller, 2002:348). Mrs. Donoghue, while stopping at a café in Scotland with a friend, ordered and consumed a bottle of ginger beer bought by her friend. Mrs. Donoghue filled her glass with the refreshment and began to drink from it when her friend poured the remainder into her own glass when a decomposed snail floated out. Mrs. Donoghue suffered from gastro-enteritis as a result and also suffered shock due to the repulsive sight of the snail. The ginger beer had been made by the Stevenson Company and Mrs. Donoghue decided to sue them, arguing they had owed a duty of care to the consumers of their refreshments to take reasonable steps to prevent injury or harm. In this case, which was decided, for the plaintiff, by a majority of three to two judges, one of the judges, Lord Atkins defined and formed the neighbour principle, the three elements of negligence and the proximity of the legal neighbour (www.austlii.com.au). He described our legal neighbours as “…persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought reasonably to have them in contemplation as being so affected…”, whilst also establishing that to find someone liable of negligence the plaintiff must establish that a duty of care was owed to them as a legal neighbour, that there was a breach of this duty of care and that it was reasonably foreseeable that harm would occur and indeed they have suffered injury or damage as a result (www.austlii.com.au). Lord Atkins also prescribed that the relationship between consumer and supplier must be of logical or causal proximity (Miller, 2002:364). Although Lord Atkins and his fellow judges provided a landmark decision with guidelines for future cases, the criteria was very general and extremely broad giving rise to the many cases coming before the courts incessantly.

In 1981, another negligence case was heard in the High Court, that of Wyong Shire Council v Shirt on appeal (Brown & Bailey, 2002:122). Mr. Shirt was injured when he fell off his water skis on the lake and hit his head on the bed of the lake, resulting in him becoming a quadriplegic. Despite Mr. Shirt being an inexperienced skier and conducting his skiing in waters marked “Deep Water” by the council, indicating that there was a channel from the creek to the lake, the Wyong Shire Council was found to be liable for Mr. Shirt’s injuries (Brown & Bailey, 2002:122). This binding precedent set by the High Court of Australia, further extended the tort of negligence by providing a precedent for councils owing a duty of care to the users of their property. Furth

Some topics in this essay:
Brown Bailey, Craig-Farr Shirt, Donoghue Stevenson, Lord Atkins, Jaensch Coffey, House Lords, Court Australia, Supreme Court, Court Court, John Martins, brown bailey, tort negligence, donoghue stevenson, duty care, lord atkins, brown bailey 2002, bailey 2002, australian knitting mills, council found, jaensch coffey, binding precedent, australian knitting, bailey 2002 119, lord atkins fellow, extended tort negligence,