## Facts

- A customer’s friend bought her a bottle of ginger beer manufactured by Stevenson at a café in Paisley, Scotland.
- The ginger beer was sold in a dark, opaque bottle that prevented inspection of the contents before consumption.
- After some of the drink was consumed, the remaining contents were poured out and the decomposed remains of a snail allegedly emerged.
- The customer alleged she suffered shock and severe gastro-enteritis from consuming the contaminated product.
- She had no contract with the manufacturer and did not purchase the drink herself, so any claim depended on negligence rather than contract.

## Issues

1. Whether a manufacturer owes a duty of care in negligence to an ultimate consumer who has no contractual relationship with the manufacturer.
2. Whether a duty of care arises when a product is intended for human consumption and reaches the consumer in a form that precludes reasonable intermediate examination.
3. Whether the pleaded facts, assumed true at this stage, disclosed a legally relevant cause of action sufficient to proceed to proof.

## Decision

- The House of Lords, by a 3–2 majority, allowed the consumer’s appeal and held the pleadings disclosed a relevant negligence claim.
- The Court restored the lower court decision permitting the action to proceed to proof on the facts.
- The majority held that, on the pleaded facts, the manufacturer owed a duty of care to the ultimate consumer despite the absence of contract.
- The dissent would have rejected recognition of such a general duty as unsupported by existing authority and better left to legislation.

## Legal Principles

- A manufacturer owes a duty to take reasonable care to avoid foreseeable injury to persons closely and directly affected by the manufacturer’s acts or omissions (the “neighbor principle”).
- A duty of care is owed to the ultimate consumer of products intended for human consumption when the manufacturer intends the product to reach consumers as supplied and there is no reasonable possibility of intermediate inspection.
- Negligence duty analysis is not confined to closed categories; courts may recognize duties where ordinary negligence principles (including foreseeability and proximity) justify liability.
- At the pleadings stage, the question is legal relevancy: whether the alleged facts, if proved, could establish negligence; the decision does not determine ultimate liability or damages.

## Conclusion

The House of Lords held that a manufacturer may owe a duty of care in negligence to an ultimate consumer without contractual privity, particularly for sealed consumable goods that cannot reasonably be inspected, and it articulated a general duty framework based on foreseeability and proximity.


Donoghue v. Stevenson, [1932] A.C. 562 (H.L.)