It's been many a day since my last confession, and it just happens to be a coincidence that today coincides with my wish to avoid studying for an exam. The Easter holidays were filled with wonder and happiness, and I find it sad to return to the monotonous life I must live during the university term.
I have been occupying my time lately by listening to lecture audios and there have been a few interesting cases in Torts that I thought I might share. Hopefully I don't offend anybody with this first case.
Behrens v Bertram Mills Circus [1957] goes as follows:
Around the big top were sideshows. Members of the public would buy a ticket and go in. One sideshow consisted of performing midgets. The elephants were about to arrive at the big top but had to pass the sideshow. The elephants were linked up by holding onto each other’s tails. One customer had with him a small dog and tethered it to a soap box outside the sideshow tent. When the lead elephant passed Simba, the dog, Simba reared up and barked at the elephant. The elephant swerved and made for the dog. Simba broke off his lead and fled into the sideshow where the lead elephant and the linked elephants, followed. The elephants trampled the midgets. The performers sued their employers for the breach of the duty to take reasonable care of them. It was found that it wasn’t safe to bring the elephants past the sideshow.
I'm not sure if I heard the following names correctly, but here goes anyway.
Mutual Life & Citizens Assurance v Evatt [1971]
The plaintiff, Mr Evatt, was an imminent public figure. His brother had a lot of shares and investments with Mutual Life (defendent). He was considering investing in another company called Palmers. Palmers owned and ran a string of electrical retail stores. He knew that Palmers was a subsidiary of Mutual Life. Before he put his money in, he wrote to Mutual Life asking whether, in their view, it was a sound investment. He got back a favourable response. He put a lot of money into Palmers. Shortly afterwards, Palmers collapsed, and he lost his investments. Sued Mutual Life in negligence, founding on Hedley Byrne (a case). A 3-2 majority found against the plaintiff. The basis was that Mutual Life had given a favourable reference but had never held themselves out as possessed of any particular financial advice skill. This was based upon a statement in a previous case by Judge A (can't remember his name). However, the majority (the 3) found that Judge A did not been the statement to apply in these particular circumstances. The minority, which actually consisted of Judge A, found that he had actually did mean them to apply in such circumstances, and he should know. So, what Judge A himself said that he meant, was in fact held to be not what he meant by other judges.
Hopefully that makes sense to you. Anyway, I thought it was amusing when I was listening to it.
