Haley v London Electricity Board

Those who create hazards on a public pavement must take reasonable care for every class of pedestrian whose presence they ought reasonably to foresee. On a city pavement, this includes blind pedestrians travelling independently with a white stick.

The precautions required depend on the circumstances. Operators may assume that disabled pedestrians will exercise reasonable care and use available aids. Where an unusual low obstruction may escape a properly used stick, a warning adequate for sighted pedestrians may nevertheless be negligent. A simple guard detectable by the stick may discharge the duty.

The appellant, who was blind, independently walked along a London pavement using a white stick. He tripped over a sloping punner placed across the pavement by the respondent’s workmen to divert pedestrians around an excavation. The punner was only a few inches above the ground where he encountered it, and his properly used stick passed over it. The fall caused grave injury.

The trial judge and Court of Appeal held that the precautions adequately warned normally sighted pedestrians and dismissed the claim. The appellant appealed on the question whether the respondent’s common-law duty of care extended to blind pedestrians and, if so, whether the warning was adequate.

1. Appeal allowed unanimously. The House held that the respondent breached its common-law duty of care. The case was remitted for the assessment of damages.
2. Per Lord Reid, persons interfering with a pavement are governed by ordinary negligence principles. They must act as a reasonable person, careful of a neighbour’s safety, would act with the knowledge reasonably attributable to a person in their position. There is no fixed rule limiting the protected class to able-bodied pedestrians.
3. Per Lords Reid, Morton, Evershed, Hodson and Guest, the independent use of city pavements by blind people carrying white sticks was a matter of common knowledge. Their presence was therefore reasonably foreseeable. The duty extended to blind pedestrians, although the precautions needed to discharge it could differ from those sufficient for sighted pedestrians.
4. Per Lords Morton, Evershed, Hodson and Guest, operators may assume that a blind pedestrian will exercise reasonable care and properly use a stick or other available aid. The decision did not require ordinary permanent objects to be padded, nor did it impose identical precautions at every public place. The extent of the obligation remains sensitive to the location, likelihood of disabled users, nature of the hazard, and practical means of protection.
5. The precautions were sufficient for normally sighted pedestrians but insufficient for a blind pedestrian exercising proper care. The sloping punner was an unusual low obstacle which a white stick could readily pass over. A light guard approximately two feet high, or another device capable of being detected by a properly used stick, could have provided adequate warning without difficulty or excessive expense.
6. Pritchard v Post Office (1950) 114 J.P. 370 could be supported on its facts because the guard used there might adequately warn a careful blind pedestrian. Its wider proposition that no special duty was owed to blind or infirm road users was too broad and, per Lord Guest, wrongly decided.

1. House of Lords: Unanimously allowed the appeal and remitted the case for assessment of damages.
2. Court of Appeal: Affirmed the trial judge’s dismissal of the claim, holding that precautions adequate for normally sighted pedestrians discharged the respondent’s duty.
3. Trial court: Dismissed the claim after finding that the respondent’s precautions gave reasonable and proper warning to normally sighted pedestrians.