Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562

Mrs Donoghue visited a café in Paisley with a friend, who bought her a bottle of ginger beer manufactured by Stevenson. The bottle was opaque and sealed, so its contents could not reasonably be inspected before consumption. Mrs Donoghue drank some of the ginger beer. She alleged that, when the remainder was poured out, the decomposed remains of a snail emerged and that she later suffered shock and gastroenteritis. Because her friend had purchased the drink, Mrs Donoghue had no contract with either the café proprietor or the manufacturer. She therefore brought a negligence claim against Stevenson. The Scottish courts struck out her claim, and the appeal to the House of Lords concerned whether her pleaded allegations disclosed a legally recognisable duty of care.

Could a manufacturer owe a duty of care to the ultimate consumer of a product intended to reach that consumer without a reasonable opportunity for intermediate examination, despite the absence of a contract?

By a majority, the House of Lords allowed Mrs Donoghue's appeal and held that her pleadings disclosed a cause of action in negligence. Lord Atkin formulated the neighbour principle: a person must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions that they can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure persons closely and directly affected by their conduct. Applied to manufacturers, a duty could arise where a product was intended to reach the ultimate consumer in the form in which it left the manufacturer, with no reasonable possibility of intermediate examination. The decision did not finally determine that Stevenson had breached the duty or caused Mrs Donoghue's illness. It allowed the action to proceed so those factual matters could be tried.

A manufacturer owes the ultimate consumer a duty to take reasonable care where it is foreseeable that a lack of care could cause injury and the product is intended to reach the consumer without reasonable intermediate examination. The case supplied the neighbour principle that became the foundation of the modern duty of care.

The case broke negligence away from rigid categories based on contract and supplied a general organising principle for duties of care. Grant v Australian Knitting Mills soon applied the reasoning to defective clothing. Later authorities developed and restricted the duty analysis: Anns v Merton London Borough Council adopted a broad approach, while Caparo Industries plc v Dickman and Robinson v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police explain the modern treatment of established and novel duties. The Consumer Protection Act 1987 also provides a separate statutory route for defective-product claims without proving negligence.