Alford v Magee

Alford v Magee - [1952] HCA 3 - HCA 1952 case summary — Zoe

This is an appeal from a judgment of the Supreme Court of Victoria. Kathleen Joyce Alford brought an action in the Supreme Court against Kevin William Magee under Part III. of the Wrongs Act 1928, which is the Victorian equivalent of Lord Campbell's Act. The action was brought in respect of the death of the plaintiff's husband and on behalf of the plaintiff and three infant children. The husband was killed as a result of a collision between a motor cycle ridden by him and a motor car driven by the defendant. The plaintiff alleged that the collision was caused by the negligent driving of his motor car by the defendant. The defendant by his defence denied negligence, and alleged that "there was contributory negligence on the part of the deceased". The plaintiff joined issue, and also alleged, in par. 2 of her reply, that, "if the deceased was guilty of contributory negligence (which allegation is denied) the defendant could nevertheless by the exercise of reasonable care have avoided the consequences of such negligence and the said collision, and had the last opportunity of so doing". This has become a generally adopted, and more or less stereotyped, form of pleading in Victoria. The action was tried by O'Bryan J. with a jury. The jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff, and assessed damages at the sum of £3,450, which they apportioned between the plaintiff and the three children. The defendant appealed to the Full Court. The Full Court by a majority (Dean and Sholl JJ., Martin J. dissenting) set aside the verdict and the judgment founded thereon, and ordered a new trial. Martin J. was of opinion that there should be a new trial but only on the question of damages - a matter of minor importance, consideration of which may be postponed. From this judgment of the Full Court the plaintiff appeals by leave to this Court. The ground upon which the Full Court set aside the verdict and judgment was that the learned trial judge had misdirected the jury with regard to contributory negligence, and, in particular, with regard to the matters raised by par. 2 of the reply.

[9]

The direction of the learned trial judge to the jury was not challenged up to a point at which, after explaining to them what may be regarded as the primary rules relating to negligence and contributory negligence, he concluded by saying: "If he" (i.e., the defendant) "proves the cyclist was negligent and his negligence was a contributing cause of the accident, then, generally speaking, he is exonerated and he is entitled to a verdict". Then follows the passage to which objection is taken, and it is desirable to set this passage out in full. His Honour proceeded: "Mr. Starke has relied on a doctrine called the doctrine of last opportunity and that doctrine is that sometimes, although a plaintiff may be guilty of contributory negligence, he does not lose his right to a verdict, if the jury is of the opinion that, although the plaintiff was guilty of contributory negligence, the defendant had a last opportunity of avoiding the accident and should have avoided it. The case in which this doctrine was first announced was the case of a man who tethered his donkey to the roadway and left him lying there on the roadway. Another user of the highway came along without seeing the donkey on the roadway when he should have done so and he drove over it. Well, the jury thought that the defendant's driver who ran into the donkey was guilty of negligence. He should have seen it and should have avoided it. The defendant said, "You were also guilty of negligence, you should not have left your donkey lying there on the roadway". The plaintiff's reply was and the Court so held, "That is true enough, but you, the driver, had a last opportunity of avoiding that negligent act of mine. You should have seen that negligent act and you should have avoided. You had that opportunity at a time when I, the owner of the donkey, could not have done anything about the matter." As I understand Mr. Starke, he asks you to apply that rule in this case in this way. At any rate, this was the only illustration he gave of how the last opportunity rule could apply in her favour. Supposing you find that the defendant Magee was guilty of negligence, either through not keeping a proper lookout or by driving too fast north up Auburn Road, and supposing you also think the motor cyclist came too fast out into the intersection, so that you think they were both guilty of negligence which contributed to this accident, still, he says, you might find that the motor cyclist was going too fast to have any chance after he came into the intersection of avoiding the accident. So that, in fact, it was the motor car driver, the defendant, who had the last opportunity of avoiding the action. Now, it is my duty to tell you that there is a further gloss on this doctrine of contributory negligence. It is this. If the plaintiff has, by his own negligent conduct, deprived himself of the opportunity of having a last opportunity in other words if he would have had a last opportunity if he had not deprived himself of it, his negligence is then deemed to continue right up to the moment of collision and, therefore, he cannot recover. Supposing a man, for instance, starts out with defective brakes - that is not this case, but it will illustrate what I mean. He goes out with defective brakes on a motor car or on any vehicle - and he has not got a last opportunity because he started out with these defective brakes, he would have had a last opportunity if he had not started out with defective brakes; in such a case the other man is not said in those circumstances to have the last opportunity. The negligence in driving the motor vehicle with defective brakes continues right up to the moment of collision. And so I suggest to you in this case that, if you did find the facts as Mr. Starke has suggested, you might, if you did find them that way - that the motor cyclist came out too fast and that his fast driving was one of the causes of the accident - you would probably come to this conclusion - "Well, he may not have had a last opportunity, having come out too fast, but it was his own negligence in coming out too fast which deprived him of that opportunity." And therefore he cannot succeed. One way in which the courts have looked at this matter of last opportunity, and I think it is possibly the clearest way of looking at it, is the way in which the New Zealand courts have approached this problem. They said this - The way you are to assess this matter is to go backwards from the time the accident happened. You have got an accident happening on a roadway at a certain point of time. Now, if you go back from that point of time and you find that there is a period at which one of the parties could have avoided the accident but the other could not, then that person who could have avoided the accident is said to have had the last opportunity. So you can really form this judgment if you say, "Well, I think it was his negligence which was the real cause of the accident." Now, I do not think I can put it any clearer than that to you. It is not a very clear doctrine in itself, I think, this doctrine - but I think that it is as clear as I can put it to you, as to what the law is in regard to last opportunity".

[13]

The majority of the Full Court, applying State Electricity Commission of Victoria v. Gay [1] , held that it was wrong, in the circumstances of this case, to direct the jury in any manner which left it open to them to say that the so-called "last opportunity rule" applied to the case. There was, in their opinion, no possible view of the evidence which could call for the application of that "rule". This appeal, therefore, requires some examination of Gay's Case [1] and raises notoriously difficult questions, but, in our opinion, even if it was proper in this case to direct the jury as to "last opportunity", the direction actually given involved a misdirection and was such as to make a new trial unavoidable. For the argument which his Honour (rightly or wrongly) attributes to Mr. Starke was an entirely untenable argument, and the jury should have been directed to ignore it. It is true that his Honour discouraged the jury from adopting it, but he did actually leave it to them as a possible view, and they may in fact have adopted it. Stated fully, the argument amounts to this: - "The deceased did not have a last opportunity to avoid the collision because he was travelling too fast when he entered Auburn Road: therefore, the defendant did have a last opportunity to avoid the collision, and, not having taken this opportunity, he cannot escape liability by virtue of any negligence on the part of the deceased". The deceased is thus put as being entitled to rely on his own negligence to exculpate himself and inculpate the defendant. The non sequitur is obvious. The direction is also open to more general objections. It does not make it clear that the critical question is not whether the deceased had a "last opportunity" but whether the defendant had a "last opportunity". It introduces a view which has been entertained - though not universally - of British Columbia Electric Railway Co. Ltd. v. Loach [2] , in relation to the negligence of the deceased (not the defendant). This could hardly fail to confuse the jury. And it does not make it clear that, on any view of the matter, it is only if a failure on the part of the defendant to take advantage of a "last opportunity" amounted to a failure to exercise reasonable care that the "last opportunity rule" could help the plaintiff. And at this stage it was at least highly desirable to explain to the jury what is sometimes called the rule in The Bywell Castle [3] . Further, the direction refers to an approach to the problem which has been suggested in New Zealand, without giving any guidance to the jury as to how any such approach might possibly help them in the particular case. It is extremely difficult to see how it could do anything but confuse them.

[16]

If one thing in this unhappily confused field is clear, it is that the modern common law as to contributory negligence is not - for the purposes, at any rate, of a large class of cases - completely stated by saying simply that, if a plaintiff's negligence has been a cause of the damage of which he complains, he cannot recover from a defendant whose negligence has also been a cause of that damage. For the purposes of very many cases such a statement requires qualification. And here, at the very outset, we are faced with a difficulty which is really a terminological difficulty. Crompton J. in Tuff v. Warman [2] said: - "The word "contribute" is a very unsafe word to use: it is much too loose". And Sir William Holdsworth (Hist. Eng. Law, vol. iii, p. 378) speaks of "that miscalled doctrine, "contributory negligence" ". But the term has become an everyday legal term, and we should know what we mean by it. There are two possible ways of defining it, one of which was adopted by O'Bryan J. in the present case, and the other (so far as one can gather from the report) by Sholl J. in Gay's Case [1] . The one view regards the term as meaning negligence on the part of the plaintiff which has been a cause of damage in the same sense in which it is necessary for the plaintiff himself to prove that negligence of the defendant was a cause of the damage. On this view contributory negligence is sometimes a good defence and sometimes not, and so we state a general rule that it is a good defence followed by a qualification or exception - which may or may not be correctly expressed in terms of a last opportunity of the defendant. The other view regards the term as meaning such negligence of the plaintiff as will disentitle him to succeed against a negligent defendant. On this view, of course, ex hypothesi contributory negligence is always a good defence, and so we state a rule simpliciter, though it must, of course, incorporate what, from the other point of view, is an exception to a general rule. It appears to have been the latter point of view that Sholl J. adopted in Gay's Case [1] . But the former point of view seems preferable for a number of substantial reasons. The latter point of view may be supported by reference to many cases in which eminent judges have approached the problem as a problem of "causation" and seem to have been asking themselves the question: "What negligence is "contributory"?" It may also be supported by reference to Bridge v. Grand Junction Railway Co. [2] , in which a special plea of negligence on the part of both plaintiff and defendant was held bad. But, in the first place, if we look at the matter historically, there can be no doubt that Professor Glanville Williams (Joint Torts & Contributory Negligence, p. 223) is right when he says (as others also have said) that the general rule of the common law was that "if the damage was caused by the fault of both parties, neither could recover from the other". Because this rule "worked hardship", he says, "where one of the two negligent parties sustained the whole of the loss", it was "later modified by a second rule". In the second place, it seems more natural and appropriate to use the term as meaning negligence of the plaintiff which has been a cause of the damage in the above sense and then to consider what circumstances will preclude such negligence from affording a good defence. In the third place, it is a simpler and more practical course to put the position to a jury in the form of a general rule subject to a qualification: in many cases the general rule can be put to them without qualification, as was held in Gay's Case [1] to be the proper course. Finally the position was so put in what must still be regarded as the leading authorities, Tuff v. Warman [3] and Radley v. London & North-Western Railway Co. [4] .

[18]

These considerations serve to clear the ground to some extent. But it is in the formulation of the qualification that the great difficulty has been found to lie, and a vast mass of learned discussion, judicial and academic, has accumulated around it. The difficulty is inherent in the whole conception of contributory negligence as a defence. Sir William Holdsworth (op. cit., vol. iii, pp. 378, 379, vol. viii, pp. 459-462) points out that what the law has really been trying to do is to weld together two incompatible notions. After referring to a mediaeval case, in which the defective fencing of the plaintiff's close was held to afford a good defence in an action for trespass by the defendant's cattle, the learned author proceeds: - "It is to be observed that this is exactly the substance and meaning of that miscalled doctrine, "contributory negligence". According to this doctrine, when the plaintiff's own act is the" (? an) "effective cause of damage which he has suffered, he cannot recover. But this rule of law arose at a time when the common law had no doctrine of negligence". At that time the basis of civil liability was conceived to be simply an act causing damage. It was not until the nineteenth century that the idea of negligence (with its connotation of blameworthiness) as a basis of liability was developed, and the original common law rule of contributory negligence does not harmonise with the developed idea. Holdsworth elsewhere (op. cit., vol. iii, p. 268) points out that "the Admiralty lawyers, being civilians, naturally grounded liability upon dolus or culpa; and the logical consequence of this conception is the modern application of the rule of division of loss to the case where both ships are at fault". A little later he says that, whatever may be the comparative merits of the Admiralty rule and the common law rule from the point of view of practical utility, "it can hardly be denied that, if liability for wrong is to be founded upon dolus or culpa the Admiralty rule is the more logical of the two". And, after citing the judgment of Lindley L.J. in The Bernina [No. 2] [1] and an article in the Law Quarterly Review (13 L.Q.R. 17, at p. 20), which speaks of the Admiralty doctrine as an "advance upon" the common law doctrine, he observes that "we may regard the rule laid down in the Maritime Conventions Act 1911 as a still further advance in the same direction". In England the Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945 (8 & 9 Geo. VI., c. 28) in effect provided for the application of the rule as to division of loss in proceedings at common law, and a statute in almost identical terms was enacted by the Parliament of Victoria in the latter part of 1951. The latter Act, however, does not apply to any case where the acts or omissions giving rise to the claim occurred before the passing of the Act, and a large number of cases, including this case, will fall to be decided without reference to its provisions.

[19]

We have said that the modern common law rule cannot be stated in absolute terms, as by saying that a plaintiff cannot recover damages from a negligent defendant if his own negligence contributed to his injury. But the emergence of the idea that a qualification was necessary does not, we think, clearly appear before Bridge v. Grand Junction Railway Co. [1] . In spite of what Parke B. says in that case in a judgment which seems, by the way, really to put the matter the wrong way round, the rule was stated in absolute terms by Lord Ellenborough C.J. in Butterfield v. Forrester [2] . In Vanderplank v. Miller [3] we find Lord Tenterden saying to the jury: "If there was want of care on both sides, the plaintiffs cannot maintain their action: to enable them to do so, the accident must be attributable entirely to the defendants". Several other such statements are to be found. When it seems to become regarded as settled that a qualification is necessary if injustice in some cases is to be avoided, some at least of the learned judges who first formulated the qualification seem to have approached the problem as if it raised a question of causation. The term "proximate cause" was used in the direction to the jury in Davies v. Mann [4] . Cf. the well known passage in the judgment of Lord Campbell C.J. in Dowell v. General Steam Navigation Co. [5] . In many later cases the question is treated as if it were one of "causation": a number of these are referred to by Professor Glanville Williams in the work already cited at pp. 236-238. The matter has been so treated in this Court by Barton J. in Commissioner of Railways v. Leahy [6] and by Isaacs J. in Symons v. Stacey [7] and A. G. Healing & Co. Pty. Ltd. v. Harris [8] : see also Municipal Tramways Trust v. Buckley [9] . We seem indeed to see here the very process which Holdsworth has observed. Liability has come to depend on negligence, which involves blameworthiness. But, when negligence of the plaintiff is considered as a defence, there is an adherence to the older idea that the basis of responsibility is simply "act causing damage", and this is accompanied by an express refusal to recognise, in this class of case, "degrees" of negligence, although negligence may obviously in fact be gross or slight - the departure from the norm of the "reasonable man" may be wide or narrow. The well known epigram about the "vituperative epithet" (Rolfe B. in Wilson v. Brett [1] ) was bound to be quoted again and again and to exhibit a possibly unfortunate vitality. But, however natural in the light of history it may seem to refer the whole question of contributory negligence to a theory of causation, this view has been most effectively criticised on logical grounds by many writers. Salmond (Law of Torts, 3rd ed., p. 35) took (inter alia) the everyday case of a passenger in a vehicle which is being driven by one who is not his servant. The vehicle collides with another vehicle, both being negligently driven. To an action by the driver of the first vehicle his own negligence will be a good defence, but that negligence will afford no defence to an action by the passenger. But it is impossible to say that the negligence of the driver of the first vehicle was a cause (in any sense) of the damage in the one case and not in the other. And see the elaborate analysis of the whole position by Glanville Williams (op. cit., s. 62).

[21]

If the common law had adhered to the simple and absolute rule stated by Lord Tenterden in Vanderplank v. Miller [2] , the fact that that rule was not based on a strictly logical theory of liability might not have mattered very much from a practical point of view. But, when it was felt that that rule had to be qualified, it mattered very much indeed. For from it has followed the extreme difficulty which has always been felt in stating the qualification or exception in a form which will not, if literally applied, have the effect of contradicting or nullifying the rule. The two most authoritative statements of it are undoubtedly to be found in the judgment of Wightman J. in what Lord Sumner called the "classic case" of Tuff v. Warman [3] and in the speech of Lord Penzance in Radley's Case [4] . It seems a strange thing, as Sir A. Goodhart has observed, that Davies v. Mann [5] should ever have been regarded as a leading case. The passages in Tuff v. Warman [6] and Radley's Case [7] are too well known to need quoting. In neither is there any reference to "last opportunity", though the use of the word "avoiding", and; in the latter case, the words "in the result", do perhaps suggest the possibility of the defendant having an opportunity to do something at a point of time at which the plaintiff had no such opportunity. So far as we can make out, the use of the expression "last opportunity", which has become so common, owes its origin to Sir John Salmond, the first edition of whose famous work on the Law of Torts was published in 1907. Salmond called the "qualification" the "rule in Davies v. Mann ". He regarded the statement of the "rule" by Lord Penzance as "elliptical and insufficient", and, read literally, as "not merely a limitation of the general rule as to contributory negligence, but the complete negation of it" (3rd ed., p. 39). He then said: - "Subject to certain qualifications, it would seem that the true test is the existence of the last opportunity of avoiding the accident". (The italics are the author's.) After an interesting discussion, in the course of which he claimed support from Pollock, Salmond concluded (3rd ed., pp. 42, 43): - "Accepting the foregoing conclusions, the rule in Davies v. Mann may be formulated thus: The contributory negligence of the plaintiff is no defence if the defendant had a later opportunity than the plaintiff of avoiding the accident by reasonable care, and at the time either knew or ought to have known of the danger caused by the plaintiff's negligence. Combining this rule with the general principle of contributory negligence, we reach the following result: When an accident happens through the combined negligence of two persons, he alone is liable to the other who had the last opportunity of avoiding the accident by reasonable care, and who then knew or ought to have known of the danger caused by the other's negligence".

[24]

There are, we think, several reasons why the last opportunity rule has failed of its object. In the first place, the use of the words " the last opportunity" in the final statement of the "combined" rule was unfortunate. It would indeed have been better if the "combined rule" had been omitted. It conveyed the impression that one or other of the parties must always have had a last opportunity to avoid the accident, and, though this is clearly remote from what the author meant, it has been one of the factors which have led to juries being directed on the subject of last opportunity in many cases in a misleading way, and in many cases where "last opportunity" ought never to be mentioned at all. The advent of fast moving road vehicles led to particularly unfortunate attempts to apply it. But the chief reason why the last opportunity theory has failed probably goes much deeper. It can hardly be doubted that it did not really represent the whole of what Wightman J. and Lord Penzance intended to convey. At best it provided a useful test in certain cases - probably a fairly large class of case - but it by no means covered the field. It is almost certainly because the rule did not really represent the spirit of the authorities that, in spite of its influence, the express references to "last opportunity" in cases of high authority have been surprisingly rare and cautious. And it is almost certainly for the same reason that after Loach's Case [1] it became - one does not know whether to say encumbered or superseded - by refinements and new analyses, and expounded in varying metaphors. Negligence could be static or dynamic, continuing or non-continuing, initial or ultimate. A very good instance of a case which cannot be brought within the scope of Salmond's conception is a case decided in this Court about three years before the publication of Salmond's work, the case of Commissioner for Railways v. Leahy [2] . In that case the plaintiff proceeded to cross on foot a level crossing, where there was a double line of railway, immediately after a train had passed on the line which was nearest to her. Passing behind this train on to the other line she was struck by a train travelling in the opposite direction. The Court held (Griffith C.J. dubitante) that it was open to a jury to hold that negligence of the plaintiff in walking on to the second line without looking to see if a train was coming was cancelled out, so to speak, by the negligence of the driver of the train in failing to sound his whistle. Here the plaintiff clearly had an opportunity of stopping her progress after the driver had any chance of stopping his train, and the driver could not at any material time have seen her. But, if the driver had whistled when he ought to have whistled, the plaintiff might have stopped in time, and it was open to a jury to say that she would have stopped in time. If the driver had exercised reasonable care, the plaintiff would have exercised reasonable care in time to prevent the accident.

[25]

Salmond's original rule, as has been said, might have been adopted as a practical workable rule covering the whole ground, even though it did not represent the whole of what Wightman J. and Lord Penzance had meant. But the elimination of this possibility, if it ever existed, seems to have come about with Loach's Case [1] . That case, if it was to be fitted into the last opportunity theory, required the enunciation of a new theory of " constructive last opportunity", and, the moment this notion was introduced, we came again face to face with the very difficulty which the last opportunity rule was designed to remove - the difficulty of framing a qualification of the general rule as to contributory negligence which would not simply destroy that rule. Last opportunity had lost its virtue. But in truth Loach's Case [1] "cannot be fitted into the doctrine of last opportunity" (Glanville Williams, op. cit., p. 234). Salmond himself, in effect recognised this. In his fifth edition (1919) he endeavoured to qualify his rule so as to fit Loach's Case [1] into the scheme as he saw it, but in his Preface (pp. viii-ix) there is a passage, the first part of which is quoted by Evatt J. in Wheare v. Clarke [2] , and the remainder of which is worth quoting in full. The learned author wrote: - "In the last edition I thought it sufficient to formulate the rule without qualification in the form commonly recognised as that of the last opportunity. The recent decision of the Privy Council in Loach's Case shows that, if this is indeed the true rule, it nevertheless requires elaboration and qualification. With much hesitation I have endeavoured to indicate what those qualifications are. An endeavour, however, to solve these difficulties leads to the conclusion that the common law rule of contributory negligence is essentially unsound. It seems impracticable to establish any satisfactory doctrine whereby, in cases where an accident happens through the combined negligence of two persons, the total liability is nevertheless cast on one or the other of them exclusively according to the circumstances". He concludes that the only satisfactory rule is the Admiralty rule as modified by the Maritime Conventions Act 1911 Imp. (1 & 2 Geo. V. c. 57).

[31]

What has been so far said is doubtless of a negative character. But, having regard to all the cases and to what has been said by Holdsworth, Salmond (in the preface to his fifth edition) and most recently by Glanville Williams, it seems unsafe, and indeed hardly possible to state what has been, for convenience, called the "qualification" in terms more precise than those used by Wightman J. and Lord Penzance. As matters stand, it is probably undesirable to attempt to be more precise. Translation having failed, interpretation remains open. In many cases, as in Wheare v. Clarke [3] , it is not fairly open to the jury to find contributory negligence at all. The really difficult question does not arise unless and until it is found that there has been negligent conduct on both sides and that the negligent conduct of each party has been a proximate cause of the damage. And even then it does not arise unless there is some ground for drawing a distinction in favour of the plaintiff between his negligent conduct and that of the defendant. Evatt J. in Wheare v. Clarke [4] , after observing that a "comparison" between the negligence of the plaintiff and that of the defendant has never been admitted in English Law, says: - "None the less, I think that, albeit not openly, it plays some part in the attribution of legal responsibility for injury". Apart from the new statutes, it is not, of course, legitimate to enter upon any comparison in point of degree. But most probably the fundamental idea behind all the cases from Davies v. Mann [1] and Tuff v. Warman [2] onwards is that there are cases in which there is so substantial a difference between the position of the plaintiff and the position of the defendant at the material time that (although the accident could not have happened if the plaintiff's conduct had not been negligent) it would not be fair or reasonable to regard the plaintiff as in any real sense the author of his own harm. This position may arise because the defendant had, and the plaintiff had not, a real opportunity, of which a "reasonable man" would have availed himself, of "avoiding the mischief" (as in Radley's Case [3] ). It may arise because the defendant's negligent conduct is substantially later in point of time than the plaintiff's negligent conduct, and a reasonably behaving defendant would have seen its effect and avoided its "consequences" (as in Davies v. Mann [1] , the facts of which are made clearer by the report in the Jurist [4] than by that of Meeson and Welsby. It may arise because the defendant had an advantage over the plaintiff, in that he was "master of the situation", but chose to run a risk (the view which was, in effect, held to be open to the jury in Williams v. Commissioner for Road Transport and Tramways (N.S.W.) [5] and the view which was open in Tuff v. Warman [2] itself, a case of collision between a steamship and a sailing barge). It may arise because the defendant had such an advantage over the plaintiff that he ought to have been "master of the situation" but unreasonably failed to take advantage of his superior position (as in Municipal Tramways Trust v. Buckley [6] ). This position is likely to arise in many cases in which a pedestrian is injured by a motor vehicle. Mr. Smithers indeed, in the present case, more or less invited us to say that the real test in all cases was found by asking whether the defendant was, while the plaintiff was not, master of the situation. This question may provide a useful test in some cases, but to adopt Mr. Smithers' suggestion would be to propound a new formula, and the fate of formulae has been sad. The above examples are merely illustrations of the kind of circumstances which may justify the drawing of a distinction, which should not be drawn on light or trivial or dubious grounds. As Isaacs J. said in Symons v. Stacey [7] , "no single formula is possible for placing the necessary facts before the jury".

[35]

The action had been brought under Lord Campbell's Act. The plaintiff's husband was killed as a result of a head-on collision between a motor car driven by him and a tram driven by a servant of the defendant. The tram was being driven on a single line of track near the centre of the road. The accident took place at night. The action was tried before Sholl J. with a jury. The first ground on which the learned Judge's direction to the jury was held to be defective appears to have been that he did not make clear to the jury that the primary rule of the common law was that (to put it shortly) contributory negligence is a good defence. When one reads the whole of the passages quoted from his charge, it is not difficult to see why he did not do so. He had decided to explain contributory negligence to the jury in terms of "real cause" and "decisive cause". Adopting thus a theory of contributory negligence (which has much authority to support it ranging from Lord Campbell to Lord du Parcq), he conceived it to be his task to explain to the jury what negligence could be regarded as "contributory", and from this point of view there was simply a rule to be expounded - not (1) a general rule and (2) a qualification of, or exception to, that rule. If the Full Court had approached the matter from this point of view, they would doubtless have said that, if the jury found negligence on the part of the plaintiff, they could not reasonably regard it as otherwise than "contributory", and ought to have been so directed. But, although it does not appear to be expressly stated, it seems clearly implicit in the judgment that the Full Court thought it preferable that the position should be put to the jury (in cases in which the qualification is relevant) in the form of a general rule which is subject to a qualification. Reasons have already been given for thinking that the view of the Full Court is to be preferred. It should perhaps be added here that the choice between the two ways of putting the position does not affect the burden of proof. The defendant must always establish such contributory negligence as will amount to a defence. We are unable to agree with Dean J. that the burden of establishing that the defendant failed to take advantage of a last opportunity, or that the case otherwise falls within the qualification of the general rule, rests upon the plaintiff.

[43]

The second observation to be made is this. We are in complete agreement with what was said by Owen J. in Commissioner for Road Transport and Tramways v. Prerauer [1] . And it may be recalled that the late Sir Leo Cussen insisted always most strongly that it was of little use to explain the law to the jury in general terms and then leave it to them to apply the law to the case before them. He held that the law should be given to the jury not merely with reference to the facts of the particular case but with an explanation of how it applied to the facts of the particular case. He held that the only law which it was necessary for them to know was so much as must guide them to a decision on the real issue or issues in the case, and that the judge was charged with, and bound to accept, the responsibility (1) of deciding what are the real issues in the particular case, and (2) of telling the jury, in the light of the law, what those issues are. If the case were a criminal case, and the charge were of larceny, and the only real issue were as to the asportavit, probably no judge would dream of instructing the jury on the general law of larceny. He would simply tell them that if the accused did a particular act, he was guilty of larceny, and that, if he did not do that particular act, he was not guilty of larceny. It may be that the issues in a civil case tend, generally speaking, to be more complex than in a criminal case. But the same principle is applicable, and looking at the matter from a practical point of view, the real issues will generally narrow themselves down to an area readily dealt with in accordance with Sir Leo Cussen's great guiding rule. These considerations lead to the conclusion that a judge should not put to the jury the qualification on the general rule as to contributory negligence unless he feels himself able to explain clearly to them exactly how the qualification can be fairly and reasonably applied by them to a view of the facts which it is open to them to entertain.

At a glance

Court

Decision date

Before

Source

Judgment (44 paragraphs)

Parties