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Salmon LJ said, at pp. 394-395
Salmon LJ said, at pp. 394-395:
"the defendants realised that, if there were a breach of contract on their part to supply the step-ladder, that breach would afford the plaintiff the opportunity of acting negligently, and that he might take it and thereby suffer injury. But it seems to me quite impossible to say that in reality the plaintiff’s injury was caused by the breach of contract. The breach of contract merely gave the plaintiff the opportunity to injure himself and was the occasion of the injury. There is always a temptation to fall into the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc; and that is no less a fallacy even if what happens afterwards could have been foreseen before it occurred."
- Heading
- Section 1
- Background
- The Law
- The Decision of the Tribunal
- The Appeal
- Causation at common law
- Monarch Steamship Co. Ltd. v. Q Karlshamns Oljefabriker (A/B) [1949] AC 1, where defective boilers caused a vessel to arrive late at the Suez Canal, by which time the Second World War had broken out a
- Quinn v. Burch Bros. (Builders) Ltd. [1966] 2 QB 370. In that case the claimant had a contract with the defendant to carry out plastering work. The claimant asked the defendant for a step ladder, whic
- Salmon LJ said, at pp. 394-395
- Alexander v. Cambridge Credit Corporation Ltd. (1987) 9 NSWLR 310. In that case auditors had failed to notice certain aspects of the trading of a company which, had they noticed them, would have led t
- Causation in the present context
- discount potential process causes which are too remote or uncertain to be regarded as a relevant process cause
- Horsfall v Minister of Pensions (1944) 1 WPAR 7 to the effect that the concept of causation embraced “only acts or conditions or events performed or undergone owing to and in compliance with the gener
- Wedderspoon v Minister of Pensions [1947] KB 562. In that case a military doctor had prescribed himself an excessive dose of chloral hydrate which caused him to die. The High Court (Denning J) conclud
- Monaghan v Minister of Pensions (1947) 1 WPAR 971, where it was held that injury or death is not attributable to service if it does not more than provide the opportunity for the act which caused injur
- NJ . In that case the claimant was deployed as an Army ski coach. While on duty as head coach at a championship a civilian skier collided with her. The Upper Tribunal held that the injury was caused b
- the moving of the chairs at MCTC the fact that the Respondent was in MCTC because he had been sentenced to detention there
- the fact that the Respondent had committed an offence in service did not mean that service caused the offence. The decision to commit an offence was a personal choice, and it just so happened that he
- following a direction in compliance with the rules of the detention establishment
- The Respondent’s Submissions
- Analysis
- the panel did not accept that the principles of liability in other areas of law (such as negligence and employment law) were of assistance in determining whether the test set by the AFCS was satisfied
- is not subject to service law”
- even if he is following a direction in compliance with the rules of the detention establishment
- Conclusions