Doughty v Turner Manufacturing Co Ltd

Liability in negligence depends on whether the kind of damage was reasonably foreseeable at the relevant time. An employer is not liable merely because an inadvertent act caused an accident which would have been foreseeable in a different form. Where the actual injury results from a new and unexpected mechanism, it is not enough that injury of the same broad kind might have resulted from another foreseeable danger. The principle in Hughes v Lord Advocate applies where the unforeseeable event is a variation in the severity or sequence of a foreseeable accident, but does not extend to an entirely different type of event. Negligence does not impose strict or insurer-like liability for unforeseeable risks.

The plaintiff was injured at the defendants’ factory when an asbestos-cement cover accidentally fell into a molten cyanide bath. The cover disintegrated in the heat, releasing moisture and causing an eruption of molten liquid.

Mr Justice Stable awarded the plaintiff £150 damages. He accepted that the defendants had not known, and could not reasonably have appreciated, that immersion of the cover would cause an explosion, but held that it was negligent to allow anything capable of producing such an event to fall into the bath. The defendants appealed. The central issue was whether the foreseeable risk of a splash causing burns was sufficient to impose liability for the different mechanism which actually caused the injury.

1. Appeal allowed. Judgment was entered for the defendants. The costs of the appeal were to follow the event, with High Court costs applying for the period during which the action was in the High Court. The money paid into court as security for costs was ordered to be paid out.
2. The governing test was reasonable foreseeability. The defendants were not liable for an act or omission which, in the state of knowledge at the time, they could not reasonably foresee as likely to injure anyone. The fact that the cover was immersed inadvertently could not create liability where deliberate immersion in the ordinary process would not have been negligent.
3. The trial judge’s reasoning would have made the defendants effectively insurers of safety. It imposed strict liability for using the furnace, although its ordinary operation required substances to be immersed in the molten cyanide. That approach was inconsistent with the ordinary law of negligence and could not be supported by importing the principle in Rylands v Fletcher 1868 Law Reports, 3 House of Lords, page 330.
4. The Court treated The Wagon Mound 1961 Appeal Cases, 388 as stating the governing law and accepted that In re Polemis 1921 3 King's Bench, page 560 was no longer good law. The foreseeable risk of splashing was distinct from the actual under-surface eruption caused by chemical disintegration of the cover.
5. Hughes v Lord Advocate 1963 2 Weekly Law Reports, 779 did not assist the plaintiff. That case concerned a foreseeable danger which caused injury by a different and unforeseeable sequence or degree. Here, the chemical explosion was a new and unexpected factor and a different kind of event.
6. Lord Pearce’s judgment was read by Lord Justice Harman. Lord Justice Harman and Lord Justice Diplock each agreed that the appeal should be allowed.

1. Court of Appeal: allowed the defendants’ appeal from the judgment of Mr Justice Stable, entered judgment for the defendants, and made consequential costs and payment-out orders.
2. High Court: Mr Justice Stable awarded the plaintiff £150 damages for personal injuries after the action had been transferred from the County Court.
3. County Court: the action was commenced there and later transferred to the High Court.