#19868 - Remoteness Of Damages - Tort Law

Remoteness of Damages

Foreseeability – Hoffmann in Jolley v Sutton LBC said only the type of damage needs to be foreseeable, not the extent or manner.

In Hughes v Lord Advocate, the defendants were working on some telephone cables. They put a tent over the manhole cover and used a paraphing lamp to see in the dark. Whilst taking a break, they left the manhole open and unattended. It was clearly foreseeable someone might enter the tent and fall into the hold, or burn themselves on the lamp. What actually happened was a child entered the tent, stumbled over the lamp, knocked it into the hold causing the lamp to break and an explosion to occur. This was by no means foreseeable. The HL said some physical injury was foreseeable, it doesn’t matter how it was caused. Some sort of burning with the lamp was foreseeable, so the explosion counted.

But in cases not involving children, the courts have been less generous. In Doughty v Turner Manufacturing, C was injured when a molten liquid cauldron cover was knocked over and reacted with asbestos and exploded. It was reasonably foreseeable knocking over the cover would result in C being burned from splashing, but it would be unrealistic to say this accident was related to that.

Exceptions to the remoteness test

Eggshell Skull

Applies to both physical injury and psychiatric illness.

In Smith v Leech Brain, D employed C’s husband to work with molten metal. Because of D’s negligence, C’s husband was struck on the lip by molten metal. The burn caused the lip to turn cancerous because of a pre-existing condition. C’s husband died. Death was not too remote because it was foreseeable there would be some physical injury, and C’s husband’s pre-existing condition meant that injury caused death.

In Brice v Brown, D negligently caused a car accident. C, because of a hysterical personality disorder, developed a severe mental illness because of the accident. Stuart Smith J said this was not too remote. It was reasonably foreseeable some psychiatric illness would occur, and this had just been aggravated by pre-existing conditions. NOTE: nowadays because of Page v Smith, C would only have to prove physical injury was foreseeable to claim for psychiatric illness, with the option of eggshell skull for the psychiatric illness.

‘...