Muir v Glasgow Corporation [1943] UKHL 2 (16 April 1943)

A tea room manager allowed a church group to bring in a large tea urn, which was subsequently spilt, scalding a child. The House of Lords held the manager was not negligent as the accident was not reasonably foreseeable.

Facts

The appellants, Glasgow Corporation, managed a public tea room in King’s Park, Glasgow. During a period of heavy rain, the manager, Mrs Alexander, gave permission for a church picnic party of about 30-40 people, mostly children, to take shelter in the tea room and use it to consume their own food and tea. Two members of the picnic party, Mr McDonald and Mr Taylor, carried a large, heavy tea urn (holding approximately nine gallons of hot tea) from the church hall to the tea room. They carried it through a narrow passage inside the tea room where a number of children, including the six-year-old pursuer, Eleanor Muir, were gathered to buy sweets and ice cream from a counter. As they carried the urn, one of the men lost his grip, and the hot tea spilt out, severely scalding the pursuer and several other children.

Issues

The central legal issue was whether the appellants, Glasgow Corporation, acting through their employee Mrs Alexander, were guilty of negligence. Specifically, did the manager owe a duty of care to the children in the tea room, and if so, did she breach that duty by allowing the tea urn to be brought in and carried through the hall in this manner? The key question was whether a person of reasonable care and skill in Mrs Alexander’s position ought to have foreseen the risk of injury to the children from the urn being carried past them.

Judgment

The House of Lords unanimously allowed the appeal, reversing the decision of the Second Division of the Court of Session and restoring the judgment of the Lord Ordinary. It was held that the appellants were not liable as the manager had not been negligent. The risk of the urn being dropped or spilt was not something that a reasonable person in her position should have foreseen.

Lord Thankerton

Lord Thankerton emphasised that the standard of care is based on what a reasonable person would foresee as a probable consequence of their actions, not a mere possibility. He stated:

In my opinion, it has long been held in Scotland that all that a person can be held bound to foresee are the reasonable and probable consequences of the failure to take care, judged by the standard of the ordinary reasonable man… The Court of Session has held that the appellants were negligent, in that Mrs. Alexander, their manageress, should have foreseen that it would be unsafe to carry an urn containing hot tea through the passage where the children were.

He concluded that Mrs Alexander had no reason to anticipate that the urn would be carried unsafely and was entitled to assume it would be handled with care by the adults in charge.

Lord Macmillan

Lord Macmillan delivered the leading judgment, which contains the classic exposition of the ‘reasonable person’ test. He defined the standard of care as an objective and impersonal one, independent of the personal characteristics of the defendant.

The standard of foresight of the reasonable man is, in one sense, an impersonal test. It eliminates the personal equation and is independent of the idiosyncrasies of the particular person whose conduct is in question. Some persons are by nature unduly timorous and imagine every path beset with lions; others, of more robust temperament, fail to foresee or nonchalantly disregard even the most obvious dangers. The reasonable man is presumed to be free both from over-apprehension and from over-confidence…

He reasoned that Mrs Alexander was not blameable for sanctioning the bringing in of the tea. The calamitous accident was the result of the immediate negligence of the two carriers of the urn, an act for which the appellants were not responsible. She had no reason to foresee such an event.

Lord Wright

Lord Wright distinguished between a mere possibility of an event occurring and a reasonable probability. He held that a reasonable person is not expected to guard against every faint possibility of danger, only those which are reasonably probable. He framed the core question thus:

The question then is whether Mrs Alexander, the manageress, was negligent in giving her consent. To decide this it is necessary to determine what she ought to have foreseen. The particular risk was that one of the two men carrying the urn might slip or stumble or let go his handle, and that the urn might be upset and the hot tea spilt on the children. That is what happened. Was that a mere possibility or was it a reasonable probability? Was it a risk which Mrs Alexander ought to have realised as likely to happen?

He concluded that the incident was an accident which could not have been reasonably anticipated.

Implications

This case is a landmark authority in the Scots law of delict (and English law of tort) on the standard of care. It firmly establishes that the test for negligence is objective: what would a ‘reasonable person’ in the defendant’s position have foreseen and done? The judgment makes clear that liability does not automatically follow from an accident; the harm must be a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the defendant’s conduct. The case illustrates the distinction between a remote possibility of harm, which a reasonable person can disregard, and a probable risk of harm, which must be guarded against. It is a crucial precedent for defining the limits of an occupier’s duty of care, even towards children, confirming that the duty is to take reasonable care, not to ensure safety in all circumstances.

Verdict: Appeal allowed. The interlocutor of the Lord Ordinary was restored, and the defenders were assoilzied (found not liable).

Source: Muir v Glasgow Corporation [1943] UKHL 2 (16 April 1943)