Remoteness

In the tort of negligence, the UK Supreme Court has confirmed that 'The test for remoteness in the tort of negligence, as laid down in Overseas' Tankship (UK) Ltd v Morts Dock & Engineering Co, 'The Wagon Mound' [1961] AC 388, 'is that loss is too remote to be recoverable as damages if the type of loss' suffered was not reasonably foreseeable at the time of the breach of duty. The focus is on the type or kind of loss, not its precise extent or the exact way it came about.

The Supreme Court also confirmed the second part of the test in the same judgment: once a type of loss is established as reasonably foreseeable, 'the type of loss was reasonably foreseeable, it does not matter that the precise' manner in which the loss was incurred was not itself foreseeable. This tort test for remoteness is deliberately more generous to claimants than the equivalent 'contract test' derived from Hadley v Baxendale, which the Supreme Court has separately described as 'a stricter test' asking what was in the reasonable contemplation of the parties at the time the contract was made, rather than merely what was foreseeable at the time of the wrong.