Untitled

Globe, Volume III, Issue 271, 24 April 1875, Page 3

“ The Court of Queen’s Bench,” the Pall Mall Gazette states, “have recently given judgment on a point of much nicety in the law of railway liability. The effect of their decision is that a passenger who is compelled to walk four miles home at midnight through the default of a railway company must be careful to avoid catching cold, since he will be able to recover damages only for the inconvenience of the walk, and not for the discomfort of the consequential catarrh. It is a case of those ‘ causes of causes, and their impulsions one on another’ to which, as Lord Bacon observes, as cited by Mr Justice Blackburn, ‘it were infinite to look.’ Mr and Mrs Hobbs and their two young children had taken tickets from Waterloo to Hampton, but the train by which they travelled did not stop at Hampton, but carried them on to Esher, about four miles further. They arrived there at midnight, the only inn was closed, and there were no conveyances to be had. They had, therefore, to walk all the way to Hampton through the rain, alternately carrying the little Hobbses. The conseqnence of this was that Mrs Hobbs caught a cold and Mr Hobbs brought an action. The jury gave £8 damage for the inconvenience, and £2O for consequential damage on account of the illness. On a motion to set aside this verdict, the Court, after an argument of nearly two days, arrived at the conclusion that the plaintiff could only recover £8 as damages for inconvenience, and not the £2O given as damages for the cold and its consequences. The Court agreed that there was an infinite difficulty in laying down any fixed rule on the matter beyond this, that the damages must be such as naturally and immediately followed from the default, and not such as was connected through it with a series of intervening causes. Here the cold and its conquences were not the direct and immediate results of the breach of contract, and were quite distinguishable, therefore, from the fatigue and inconvenience of the walk.”