Page 1711 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 30 April 1991
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ADJOURNMENT
MR SPEAKER: It being 9.30, I propose the question:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
Mr Collaery: Mr Speaker, I require the question to be put forthwith without debate.
Question resolved in the negative.
LAW REFORM (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS) (AMENDMENT) BILL 1991
Debate resumed.
MR CONNOLLY: I think we left our Scottish lady about to pour the remainder of the contents of the ginger beer bottle into her glass. When she did that, she was most distraught to find the remains of a somewhat decomposed snail in her glass - not all of the remains, of course, because she had consumed some of those with her first glass. She suffered a degree of nervous shock and sued the ginger beer manufacturer. At the end of the day the House of Lords found that the ginger beer manufacturer was liable because it ought to owe a duty of care to a person who it could foresee could be harmed by its negligent act. The negligent act was to allow the snail to enter the ginger beer bottle. Interestingly, the High Court of Australia was somewhat in advance of the English law through another case - I think it was Grant v. Australian Knitting Wools. That actually involved a retailer in South Australia who sold a gentleman underwear which resulted in a skin rash.
As I say, bizarre facts are found throughout the law in this area. Cavalier v. Pope was itself not a particularly bizarre set of facts. The plaintiff's husband was the tenant or occupier of a house. The plaintiff was injured when a chair in which they were sitting went through some rotten floorboards. The normal principles of law, the normal principles of negligence, even perhaps before Donaghue v. Stevenson, would have suggested that you could recover, because the landlord was negligent in letting a house with rotten floorboards. However, the House of Lords at the time, in 1906, found otherwise. Lord Maughan said, "... there is no law against letting a tumbledown house". Also, Lord James said, "... no duty is cast upon a landlord to effect internal repairs unless he contracts to do so". So, in effect they were saying that, if you are renting premises and the premises are unsafe, unless you have it in the lease, it is just tough luck; you can fall through rotten floorboards.
Although, as I say, that was not a particularly interesting set of facts compared to snails in bottles and underwear that causes irritation, there was a rather more interesting case in the English High Court in 1940, namely, the case of
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