Overseas Tankship (UK) Ltd v The Miller Steamship Co

Wagon Mound (No. 2)
Court Privy Council
Citation(s) [1967] 1 AC 617, [1966] 3 WLR 498, [1966] 2 All ER 709

Overseas Tankship (UK) Ltd v The Miller Steamship Co or Wagon Mound (No. 2) [1967] 1 AC 617 is a landmark tort case, concerning the test for breach of duty of care in negligence. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council held that loss will be recoverable where the extent of possible harm is so great that a reasonable man would guard against it (even if the chance of the loss occurring was very small).

Wagon Mound (No. 2) should not be confused with the previous case of the Overseas Tankship (UK) Ltd v Morts Dock and Engineering Co Ltd or Wagon Mound (No. 1), which introduced remoteness as a rule of causation to limit compensatory damages.

Facts

The defendant owned a freighter ship named the Wagon Mound which was moored at a dock. The plaintiff owned two ships that were moored nearby. At some point during this period the Wagon Mound leaked furnace oil into the harbour while some welders were working on a ship. The sparks from the welders caused the leaked oil to ignite destroying all three ships.

The appeal to the Privy Council was on the basis of whether the defendant should be liable.

Judgment

The Privy Council found that a reasonable person in the position of the ship's engineer would have been aware of the risk of fire. Since the gravity of the potential damage from fire was so great there was no excuse for allowing the oil to be discharged even if the probability or risk of fire was low. A reasonable person, the Council held, would only neglect a risk of such a potentially great magnitude if he or she had a reason to do so, e.g. if it were cost prohibitive. Lord Reid said at 718-719,

The words "real risk" are the requirement of remoteness of damage but the test of foreseeability does not depend upon the actual risk of occurrence. The test is really whether the engineer ought to have foreseen the outbreak of fire, i.e. the type of consequence ought to have been foreseen.

Significance

This idea of a balance between magnitude and seriousness of risk is similar to that proposed by Learned Hand in United States v. Carroll Towing Co. 159 F.2d 169 (2d Cir. 1947) on the subject of legal causation. Such a formulation of the issue has struck some in the field as an argument along the lines typically made in the Law & Economics camp usually seen to be represented by the American Judge Richard Posner.[1]

The holding in this case was harshly criticized as "gibberish" by renowned torts scholar Leon A. Green.[2]

References

  1. ↑ Richard Posner, "The Learned Hand Formula for Determining Liability, Tort Law: Cases and Economic Analysis (Toronto: Little, Brown, 1982) at 1-2.
  2. ↑ Leon Green, "The Wagon Mound No. 2-Foreseeability Revised", 1967 Utah L. Rev. 197.

See also

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