Introduction to Fire Safety Management

Duty of ‘reasonable care’ owed
When considering whether or not a duty of reasonable 
care was owed courts will always seek to identify an 
established relationship between the claimant and the 
duty holder. Relationships that have been established by 
judicial precedent include employer/employee, doctor/
patient and teacher/pupil. For claims relating to the duty 
of reasonable care the landmark case that established 
the ‘neighbour’ principle was the case of 
Donoghue
v. 
Stevenson
(1932).
In this case, the claimant, Miss Donoghue, and a 
friend went into a café and her friend bought two bottles 
of ginger beer. The bartender served the beer in their 
original bottles that were dark green and opaque.
The claimant drank part of the contents of one 
bottle and on refi lling her glass, she discovered the part 
decomposed body of a snail in the remaining beer. As a 
result of drinking the beer she became ill.
Figure 1.20
The balance of reasonability

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Fire safety foundations
19
So, whom would she sue for her loss?
Her options were to sue the friend for supplying the 
beer, the bartender for selling the beer, or the original 
manufacturer and bottler of the beer. As was proven in 
the case the party most responsible for her loss and in 
best position to compensate Miss Donoghue was the 
manufacturer.
During the case, Lord Aitken made the following 
statement regarding the manufacturer, which is now 
known as the ‘neighbour principle’:
You must take reasonable care to avoid acts 
or omissions that you can reasonably foresee 
would be likely to injure your neighbour. Who 
then in law is my neighbour? They are per-
sons who are so closely or directly affected 
by my acts or omissions that I ought to have 
them in mind.
Ultimately the manufacturer does not only owe duty to 
those purchasing, but also those consuming the ginger 
beer. This principle is used in negligence claims under 
safety grounds. Therefore using this neighbour principle, 
the following groups of people could be regarded as the 
‘neighbours’ of employers:
➤
Employees
➤
Agency 
staff
➤
Contractors
➤
Members of the public
➤
Emergency 
services
➤
Visitors.