Re Polemis [1921] 3 K.B. 560

A ship was chartered for wartime cargo service. While cargo was being handled, a plank fell into the hold through the negligence of people for whom the charterers were responsible. Flammable vapour had accumulated there, and the impact produced ignition and a fire which destroyed the vessel. Some damage from dropping a plank was foreseeable, but the resulting fire was not the kind of damage that had been anticipated. The owners sought compensation, raising the question whether the unexpected character of that direct consequence limited responsibility once the handling had been found negligent.

Under the remoteness approach then applied, was the charterer liable for an unforeseeable fire that directly resulted from negligent cargo handling?

The Court of Appeal held the charterers liable for the destruction of the ship. The negligent act could foreseeably cause some damage, and the fire was treated as its direct consequence. Under the approach adopted, it was unnecessary that the particular kind of damage ultimately suffered had been foreseeable once negligence was established. That was a historical direct-consequence test, not liability for every consequence irrespective of intervening causes. The Wagon Mound No 1 subsequently rejected that approach in favour of reasonable foreseeability of the relevant kind of damage. Re Polemis should therefore be used to explain the development of remoteness, rather than as the governing rule for an ordinary modern negligence claim.

Re Polemis historically imposed liability for an unforeseen kind of damage where it directly followed an act already shown to be negligent. The Wagon Mound No 1 displaced that direct-consequence approach with foreseeability of the relevant kind of damage as the ordinary negligence remoteness test.

The case separates the foreseeability needed to establish negligent conduct from the remoteness test once negligence is established. Its historical answer to the second question is no longer the ordinary approach. A good comparison with The Wagon Mound explains why directness alone proved too broad. The thin-skull rule addresses a different issue, the claimant's unusual susceptibility once the relevant injury is within responsibility, and should not be described as preserving Re Polemis wholesale or making negligence strict liability.