Common Law Reasoning

1420 Words6 Pages
Choose any decision of the House of Lords that you have studied this term in Tort, Crime, Contract or General Principles of Law, and critically examine the common law reasoning within it. (3-4 pages) BOLTON V STONE FACTS: During a cricket match, a batsman hit the cricket ball which struck and injured the respondent who was standing on highway adjoining the ground. The cricket ball was hit out of the ground even though there was a protective fence rising to seventeen feet above the cricket pitch. The distance from the striker to the fence was about seventy eight yards and that to the place where the respondent was hit was about one hundred yards. The cricket ground had been occupied and used as a cricket ground for about ninety years. However there was evidence that on some six occasions in a period of over thirty years a ball had been hit into the highway but no one had been injured. The respondent claimed damages for negligence from the appellants, as occupiers of the ground. ISSUE: What is the standard of care owed by a land owner to persons on an adjoining highway? RULE: The land owner does not owe a special duty of care to persons on an adjoining highway. The landowner is held to be a reasonable, ordinary and prudent person. The court held that in this case, the risk of a ball escaping the field was so low that a reasonable person would not have taken further precautions. Unless one has committed acts that are unreasonable, he has not breached a duty to his neighbour. RESULTS: The appellants were not liable to the respondent because for negligence to be present in an act, not only a reasonable possibility should be happening but also of injury being caused to the respondent. Therefore from the facts given in Bolton v. Stone case, the risk of injury to a person on the highway resulting from the hitting of a cricket ball out of the ground was so

More about Common Law Reasoning

Open Document