Bolton v Stone
A defendant is not negligent for failing to guard against a risk that is so small that a reasonable person would not take precautions against it.
Facts
Miss Stone was standing outside her house in a quiet street when she was hit on the head by a cricket ball hit from a nearby cricket ground. The ball had travelled about 100 yards and cleared a fence about 17 feet above the pitch. Balls had been hit out of the ground only about six times in 30 years, and no one had been injured before. She sued the cricket club in negligence.
Legal principle
The House of Lords held that the club was not liable. Lord Reid said that the test was whether the risk of damage to a person on the road was so small that a reasonable man in the position of the defendants, considering the matter from the point of view of safety, would have thought it right to refrain from taking steps to prevent the danger. The risk of injury was so small that a reasonable person would not have taken further precautions. It is not enough that an event is reasonably foreseeable; the risk must be a material one.
Related cases on breach of duty
- Blyth v Birmingham Waterworks Co (1856) 11 Exch 781
- Bolam v Friern Hospital Management Committee [1957] 1 WLR 582
- Bolitho v City and Hackney Health Authority [1998] AC 232
- Daborn v Bath Tramways Motor Co Ltd [1946] 2 All ER 333
- Dunnage v Randall [2015] EWCA Civ 673, [2016] QB 639
- Glasgow Corporation v Muir [1943] AC 448
- Latimer v AEC Ltd [1953] AC 643
- Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board [2015] UKSC 11, [2015] AC 1430
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