[12] The Wagon Mound (No 1) PDF

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Summary

Detailed case brief
Torts: Negligence...

Description

The Wagon Mound (No 1) Area of law concerned:

Negligence

Court: Date:

1961

Judge:

Viscount Simons

Counsel: Summary of Facts:

Procedural History:

Judge’s reasoning:

While a vessel of the appellants was taking in bunkering oil in Sydney Harbour, a quantity of oil was allowed to spill into the harbour. The oil caught fire and seriously damaged the respondents’ nearby wharf. The trial judge found that the appellants ‘did not know and could not reasonably be expected to have known that the furnace oil was capable of being set afire when spread on water’, and that apart from the damage by fire, the respondents had suffered some damage in that the oil had congealed upon and interfered with the use of their slipways, ‘damage which beyond question was a direct result of the escape of the oil’ Re Polemis and Furness Withy & Co Ltd the Court of Appeal held that the charterers were responsible for all the consequences of their negligent act even though those consequences could not have reasonably been anticipated. Position in Polemis

Polemis should no longer be regarded as good law… it does not seem consonant with the current ideas of justice or morality that for an act of negligence, however slight or venial, which results in some trivial foreseeable damage the actor should be liable for al consequences however unforeseeable and however grave, so long as they can be said to be ‘direct.’ Justification for throwing out Polemis

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It is a principle of civil liability, subject only to qualifications which have no present relevance, that a man must be considered to be responsible for the probable consequences of his act. To demand more of him is too harsh a rule; to demand less is to ignore that civilised order requires the observance of a minimum standard of behaviour. Man should be responsible for probable consequences.

If some limitation must be imposed upon the consequences for which the negligent actor is to be held responsible- and all are agreed that some limitation there must be- why should that test (reasonable foreseeability) be rejected which, since he is judged by what the reasonable man ought to foresee, corresponds with the common conscience of mankind, and a test (the ‘direct’ consequence) be substituted which leads to nowhere but the never-ending and insoluble problems of causation. Reasonable foreseeable test should be used instead of direct consequence....