Gorringe v Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council [2004] UKHL 15 (1 April 2004)

A driver injured in an accident claimed the council was negligent for failing to paint a 'Slow' warning sign on the road. The House of Lords held that the council's statutory power to place signs did not create a private law duty of care.

Facts

The claimant, Mrs Catherine Gorringe, suffered serious head injuries in a road traffic accident on 26 March 1996. She was driving her car on a country road and, upon reaching the crest of a hill, she braked sharply after seeing a bus, which was partially obscured. She skidded into the path of the bus and a collision occurred. She had no memory of the incident. The claimant argued that the accident was caused by the negligence of the local highway authority, Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council. She contended that the Council had a duty to paint a ‘Slow’ marking on the road to warn drivers of the potential hazard posed by the sharp crest, and that their failure to do so amounted to a breach of a common law duty of care.

Issues

The central legal issue was whether a public authority, which possesses a statutory power to take certain actions (in this case, to place traffic signs under the Road Traffic Act 1988), owes a common law duty of care to an individual to exercise that power. The case specifically examined whether a failure to act (an omission) by a highway authority could give rise to liability in negligence, and sought to clarify the principles established in the earlier case of Stovin v Wise [1996] AC 923.

Judgment

The House of Lords unanimously dismissed the appeal, finding that the Council did not owe the claimant a common law duty of care. The Law Lords affirmed the precedent set in Stovin v Wise, holding that a statutory power does not, by itself, give rise to a common law duty to exercise that power.

Lord Hoffmann

Lord Hoffmann, delivering one of the leading speeches, emphasised the distinction between a public law duty to act rationally and a private law duty to compensate for loss. He stated that a common law duty of care should not be imposed merely because a public authority has a statutory power. For such a duty to arise from a failure to exercise a power, exceptional circumstances are required. He set out a high threshold for such a claim:

My Lords, I think that the minimum preconditions for basing a duty of care upon the existence of a statutory power, if it can be done at all, are, first, that it would have been irrational for the authority not to have exercised the power, so that there was in effect a public law duty to act, and secondly, that there are exceptional grounds for holding that the policy of the statute requires compensation to be paid to persons who suffer loss because the power was not exercised.

He concluded that these conditions were not met. The Council had not acted irrationally, and there was nothing in the Road Traffic Act 1988 to suggest a policy of compensating crash victims for a failure to place signs.

Lord Steyn

Lord Steyn strongly endorsed the reasoning in Stovin v Wise, highlighting the constitutional implications of courts imposing such duties on public bodies. He argued that it would amount to judicial overreach into matters of policy and resource allocation, which are properly the domain of democratically elected bodies.

It would be a subversion of the democratic process, and a usurpation of the functions of Parliament, for judges to create a new judicially imposed social welfare system.

He rejected the idea that the Council’s actions had created a ‘trap’, as the danger was a natural feature of the road that any prudent driver should anticipate.

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood

Lord Brown agreed, explicitly rejecting the argument that the road constituted a trap created by the Council. He observed that the primary responsibility for safety lay with the road user, describing the claimant as ‘the author of her own misfortune’ for driving at a speed that did not allow her to stop in the distance she could see to be clear. He noted:

But can it really be said that this brow constitutes a trap? I think not. It is, of course, a potential hazard. But it is a hazard of a kind which motorists not infrequently encounter on the road and for which… they are expected to be on the look out.

He stressed that imposing liability for such omissions would open the floodgates to litigation and place an unreasonable burden on highway authorities.

Implications

The decision in Gorringe is of major importance in the law of tort. It significantly reinforces the principle that a public authority cannot generally be sued in negligence for a mere failure to exercise a statutory power. The judgment clarifies that common law duties will not be readily ‘bolted on’ to statutory frameworks. It protects public authorities from widespread liability for omissions, allowing them to make policy-based decisions on resource allocation without the constant threat of litigation. The case confirms that liability will only arise in exceptional circumstances, such as where the authority itself created the source of danger, or where its failure to act was so irrational as to be a breach of its public law duties, and the statute implicitly supports a right to compensation.

Verdict: The appeal was dismissed. The House of Lords held that the respondent council owed no common law duty of care to the appellant.

Source: Gorringe v. Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council [2004] UKHL 15 (1 April 2004)