## Facts

- The Postmaster-General contracted with Wright to supply a mail coach and keep it in a fit, safe condition on a specified route.
- The Postmaster-General separately contracted with other contractors to supply horses and a driver; Winterbottom was employed as the mail coach driver under that separate arrangement.
- Winterbottom was not a party to Wright’s contract but drove the coach in reliance on it and without practical means of discovering defects.
- While Winterbottom was driving the coach, it broke down due to alleged latent defects, throwing him and causing serious injury.
- Winterbottom sued Wright in tort, alleging negligent failure to maintain the coach as required by Wright’s contract with the Postmaster-General.

## Issues

1. Whether a contractor who undertakes maintenance obligations by contract owes a duty in tort to a foreseeable, injured third party who is not privy to that contract.
2. Whether a non-party may recover in negligence for injuries allegedly caused by the defendant’s negligent nonperformance of contractual obligations owed to someone else.

## Decision

- Judgment for Wright (defendant).
- The court held Winterbottom could not recover because he lacked contractual privity with Wright.
- The court rejected using a negligence pleading to avoid the privity bar where the alleged duty arose solely from the contract.
- The court distinguished cases imposing liability on non-privity defendants based on fraud or misrepresentation, which were not alleged here.
- The court relied in part on policy concerns that recognizing such claims would expose contractors to indeterminate and potentially unlimited liability to an open-ended class of persons.

## Legal Principles

- A plaintiff who is not a party to a contract generally cannot found a negligence action on the defendant’s alleged failure to perform contractual duties owed to another.
- When the asserted duty to the plaintiff is wholly derivative of a contractual undertaking to a different party, lack of privity defeats the claim.
- Liability to non-privity plaintiffs was not extended on a theory of negligent nonperformance absent allegations such as fraudulent misrepresentation.
- Courts may deny recognition of a duty where it would create indeterminate liability to an undefined group of potential claimants.

## Conclusion

The court denied recovery to an injured mail coach driver because the contractor’s maintenance obligation ran only to the contracting party, and the driver could not transform an alleged contractual breach into a negligence claim without privity; the decision reflected both formal limits on duty and concern about open-ended third-party liability.


Winterbottom v. Wright, (1842) 10 M. & W. 109 (Exch.)