Tort Law
6
G.E. van Maanen and Jaap Hage
6.1 The Domain of Tort
Donoghue vs Stevenson,[ 1932 ]AC 562
On August 26, 1928, Mrs. May Donoghue visited a bar in Paisley, Scotland. The owner of
the bar poured part of a bottle of ginger beer on top of her ice-cream; her friend poured on
the remainder. On doing so, they saw the remains of a snail in a state of decomposition.
Mrs. Donoghue later claimed to have contracted gastro-enteritis from drinking the bottle,
and therefore she wanted to be compensated financially by Stevenson, who had
manufactured the bottle.This case between Mrs. Donoghue, who allegedly suffered damage from drinking
from a bottle that contained spoiled ginger beer, and Stevenson, who produced this
bottle, has become a classic of tort law. Tort law deals with cases in which a victim
suffered damage and wants someone else to compensate the damage.
Main Principle of Tort LawAt first sight, it may seem strange that if people
suffer damage, someone else must compensate them. In fact, this would be an
exception to the main principle of tort law:Everyone must in principle bear his own
damage.
That everyone bears his own damage and that therefore nobody else must
compensate it is the starting point, the main principle of tort law. One might see
the field of tort law as dealing with the question when we must make exceptions to
this principle. In this connection, several questions pop up:
G.E. van Maanen
Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands
J. Hage (*)
Maastricht European Private Law Institute (M-EPLI), Maastricht University, Maastricht,
The Netherlands
e-mail:[email protected]
J. Hage and B. Akkermans (eds.),Introduction to Law,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-06910-4_6,#Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
101