'' In Re'' ''Polemis & Furness, Withy & Co Ltd'' (1921) is an English

tort A tort is a civil wrong, other than breach of contract, that causes a claimant to suffer loss or harm, resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the tortious act. Tort law can be contrasted with criminal law, which deals with cri ...

case on causation and remoteness in the law of

negligence Negligence ( Lat. ''negligentia'') is a failure to exercise appropriate care expected to be exercised in similar circumstances. Within the scope of tort law, negligence pertains to harm caused by the violation of a duty of care through a neg ...

. The

Court of Appeal An appellate court, commonly called a court of appeal(s), appeal court, court of second instance or second instance court, is any court of law that is empowered to Hearing (law), hear a Legal case, case upon appeal from a trial court or other ...

held that a

defendant In court proceedings, a defendant is a person or object who is the party either accused of committing a crime in criminal prosecution or against whom some type of civil relief is being sought in a civil case. Terminology varies from one juris ...

can be deemed liable for all consequences flowing from his negligent conduct regardless of how unforeseeable such consequences are. The case is an example of

strict liability In criminal and civil law, strict liability is a standard of liability under which a person is legally responsible for the consequences flowing from an activity even in the absence of fault or criminal intent on the part of the defendant. Und ...

, a concept which has generally fallen out of favour with the

common law Common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law primarily developed through judicial decisions rather than statutes. Although common law may incorporate certain statutes, it is largely based on prece ...

courts. The case may now be considered "bad law", having been superseded by the landmark decisions of ''

Donoghue v Stevenson ''Donoghue v Stevenson''

932 Year 932 (Roman numerals, CMXXXII) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * Summer – Alberic II of Spoleto, Alberic II leads an uprising at Rome against his stepfather Hugh of Italy, Hu ...

AC 562 was a Lists of landmark court decisions, landmark court decision in Scots delict law and English tort law by the House of Lords. It laid the foundation of the modern law of negligence in common law jurisdic ...

'' and '' The Wagon Mound (No 1)''.

Facts

Defendant's

stevedore A dockworker (also called a longshoreman, stevedore, docker, wharfman, lumper or wharfie) is a waterfront manual laborer who loads and unloads ships. As a result of the intermodal shipping container revolution, the required number of dockwork ...

employees Employment is a relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services. Usually based on a contract, one party, the employer, which might be a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, a co-operative, or any othe ...

were loading cargo into a ship. An employee negligently caused a plank to fall into the ship's hold. The plank caused a spark, which ignited some petrol vapour in the hold, causing an

explosion An explosion is a rapid expansion in volume of a given amount of matter associated with an extreme outward release of energy, usually with the generation of high temperatures and release of high-pressure gases. Explosions may also be generated ...

that resulted in the ship becoming a total loss. The matter was taken to

arbitration Arbitration is a formal method of dispute resolution involving a third party neutral who makes a binding decision. The third party neutral (the 'arbitrator', 'arbiter' or 'arbitral tribunal') renders the decision in the form of an 'arbitrati ...

Judgment

The arbitrator found that the defendant's negligence caused the plank to fall, and the falling plank caused the fire. The arbitrators awarded damages to the plaintiff. The defendant appealed. The

affirmed that the defendant was liable. Although the fire itself may not have been foreseeable, it was held that the defendant would nevertheless be liable for all direct consequences of his actions. The court reasoned that if the act would or might probably cause damage, the fact that the damage it in fact causes is not the exact kind of damage one would expect is immaterial, so long as the damage is in fact directly traceable to the ''negligent act'' and not due to the operation of independent causes.

Significance

Although the stevedore would have foreseen that careless loading might cause some damage to the workers, cargo, or the ship, it was beyond probability that the actual total loss would occur, yet the defendant was held fully liable. The ''Re Polemis'' decision was disapproved of, and its test replaced, in the later decision of the Privy Council in the ''Wagon Mound (No. 1)'' 961 ''Re Polemis'' has yet to be overruled by an English court and is still technically "good law". However, it was disapproved by the Privy Council, whose decisions are not binding but are strongly persuasive on English courts. The upshot is that the strict liability principle in ''Re Polemis'' has not been followed, and the case may be considered "bad law". *The move away from strict liability meant that it was more likely that a defendant would not be liable, and the Scots court in '' Hughes v Lord Advocate'' tried to find a middle way. It created the concept of "foreseeability of the class of harm"; that is, one need not foresee the actual harm, provided one could foresee a "class of harm" into which the unforeseeable result fell. Happily, this allowed two young boys who had suffered burns to be compensated; but in the English case of '' Doughty v Turner Manufacturing'' the claimant was less favoured: this factory worker who was injured in an eruption when a fellow employee careless dropped a lid into a vat of hot liquid was unable to recover as the court held that whist "splashing" was foreseeable, the actual "eruption" fell outside the "foreseeable class of harm". * Since 1932, defendants will be liable in negligence only if could have been foreseen that the breach of the duty of care towards the claimant would cause loss, damage or injury. An exception that still applies is the '' talem qualem'' rule, (or " eggshell skull rule") in cases of additional results of intentional illegal harm, to personal injury, as in '' Smith v Leech Brain''.'' Smith v Leech Brain'' 9622 QB 405

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Re Polemis and Furniss, Withy and Co Ltd 1921 in case law English tort case law English causation case law 1921 in British law Ship fires

Facts

Judgment

Significance

See also

Notes