Product Liability

Abstract

The most famous product liability case of all is perhaps the most famous in all of the law of tort: no defective product has ever since achieved the notoriety of Mrs Donoghue’s bottle of ginger beer and its alleged contents, the decaying remnants of a snail. In deciding that case, Lord Atkin laid down the following test for liability for products in the common law of negligence:

‘[A] manufacturer of products which he sells in such a form as to show he intends them to reach the ultimate consumer in the form in which they left him, with no reasonable possibility of intermediate examination, and with the knowledge that absence of reasonable care in the preparation or putting up of the products will result in injury to the consumer’s life or property, owes a duty to that consumer to take that reasonable care.’ (Donoghue v. Stevenson [1932] AC 562)6