Jobling v Associated Dairies Ltd

Ratio Decidendi

Ffeithiau

Jobling slipped at work due to his employer's negligence in 1973, injuring his back. In 1976, before the trial, he developed an unrelated spinal condition (myelopathy) that rendered him totally unfit for work regardless of the original injury.

Crynodeb o'r dyfarniad

The House of Lords held that the employer's liability for the back injury was limited to the period from the 1973 accident until 1976, when the claimant was in any event rendered totally unfit for work by an unrelated and naturally occurring spinal disease (myelopathy). In assessing damages the court must take account of the ordinary 'vicissitudes' or chances of life — including the risk that the claimant might have become disabled anyway through illness — and the supervening myelopathy was just such a vicissitude, which would have overtaken the original injury regardless of the tort. Their Lordships were critical of the reasoning in Baker v Willoughby but distinguished it on the basis that there the supervening event was itself a tort (a second wrongdoer), whereas here it was a natural illness; a naturally occurring condition that would have caused the disability anyway should reduce the tortfeasor's liability, otherwise the claimant would be over-compensated. The case draws the line between tortious and non-tortious supervening causes.

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