Carmarthenshire CC v Lewis [1955] UKHL 2 (17 February 1955)

A lorry driver died after swerving to avoid a four-year-old child who had escaped from a council-run nursery school onto a busy road. The House of Lords held the council was negligent for its foreseeable failure to prevent the child becoming a danger to road users.

Facts

The respondent, Mrs Lewis, brought an action for negligence following the death of her husband. Her husband, a lorry driver, was killed when he swerved his vehicle to avoid hitting a four-year-old boy who was in the middle of a main road. The swerve caused the lorry to strike a telegraph pole, resulting in the driver’s death. The child had been attending a nursery school run by the appellants, Carmarthenshire County Council. The nursery premises adjoined the main road. A teacher had taken the child and another into a classroom to prepare them for a walk, but had to leave them unattended for approximately ten minutes to attend to another child who had injured himself. During this period, the four-year-old boy left the classroom, found his way out of the school premises through an unlocked gate, and wandered onto the highway. The trial judge found that while the teacher herself was not negligent, the appellants were. The Court of Appeal upheld this judgment, and the council appealed to the House of Lords.

Issues

The primary legal issues before the House of Lords were:

1. Whether a local education authority, responsible for a nursery school adjacent to a busy highway, owes a duty of care to road users to prevent young children from escaping onto the highway.
2. If such a duty exists, whether the appellants were in breach of that duty in the circumstances.
3. Whether the presence of the child on the road was the legal cause of the accident that resulted in the driver’s death.

Judgment

The House of Lords unanimously dismissed the appeal, holding that the Carmarthenshire County Council was liable in negligence. Their Lordships affirmed that a duty of care was owed to road users and that this duty had been breached.

Lord Reid

Lord Reid reasoned that the risk of a young child escaping onto the road and causing an accident was plainly foreseeable. He stated that the duty of care owed by the school was not just to the child, but also to others who might be harmed by the child’s foreseeable actions. He articulated the dual nature of the foreseeable danger:

What is the alleged negligence? It is a failure to take reasonable care for the safety of children in the nursery. One of the dangers to be foreseen and guarded against is the child getting out of the school grounds on to the busy street and there being an accident. Any such accident might be of more than one kind. The child might be run over, a motorist might swerve to avoid the child and collide with some other person or object.

He concluded that the school authority had a duty to take reasonable care to prevent such occurrences and had failed to do so, as the gate was not secured.

Lord Goddard

Lord Goddard agreed, finding it was an ‘obvious’ and ‘necessary’ finding that the presence of the child was the cause of the driver swerving. He distinguished the situation from cases involving straying animals, where the law was at the time more restrictive. He focused on the general duty of a person in charge of a young child:

…if a person in charge of a child, or an animal, fails to take reasonable care to prevent it from straying on to a highway and so causing an accident…he will be liable for the resulting damage.

Although he found the teacher acted reasonably in the immediate emergency, he held the education authority ultimately responsible for the overall safety of the premises and the system in place, which proved inadequate.

Lord Tucker

Lord Tucker confirmed that the council, as the occupier of premises used for young children next to a highway, owed a duty to road users. He directly countered the argument that no duty was owed because a small child is not inherently dangerous.

The child is not itself a thing of danger, but if it is in a place where it ought not to be, i.e., in the middle of a busy street, it is a potential source of danger to a careful driver who seeks to avoid it. I cannot see any valid distinction in principle between the case of an animal and that of a child in this respect for the purpose of the existence of a duty on the occupier of the adjoining premises.

Implications

The decision in Carmarthenshire CC v Lewis is a landmark case in the law of negligence. It firmly established that an authority or person responsible for supervising young children owes a duty of care not only to the children themselves but also to third parties who might be foreseeably injured by a child’s actions. The case underscores the principle that the foreseeability of harm is central to establishing a duty of care. It confirmed that where an institution creates a risk by congregating young children near a source of danger like a busy road, it must take reasonable measures to prevent that risk from materialising and causing harm to others. The judgment is significant for applying general principles of negligence derived from Donoghue v Stevenson to a novel factual scenario, rather than being constrained by older, specific immunities such as those relating to straying livestock.

Verdict: The appeal was dismissed; the Carmarthenshire County Council was held to be liable in negligence.

Source: Carmarthenshire CC v Lewis [1955] UKHL 2 (17 February 1955)