(NOT SO) Ludicrous Litigation: Scott v Shepherd

Welcome to (not so) Ludicrous Litigation, in which we cover infamous legal cases and explain the rationale behind them! This month, we bring you the case of Scott v Shepherd, an important tort case case involving a defendant who caused chaos with fireworks.

In this case, the defendant threw a lighted firework into a market hall while a fair was being held there. The squib landed on a stall, and the stall owner picked it up and tossed it away to another stall. It landed on another, whose owner did the same. The squib experienced a lively tour around the market, until it eventually landed and exploded in the claimant’s face. The claimant suffered injuries, which blinded him in one eye.

The defendant was originally found liable for assault and trespass. However, he appealed this decision. The main issue now at hand was whether the defendant actually caused the injury. This brought into question the key tort element of causation: were the consequences of the defendant’s actions too unforeseeable and remote for him to be held responsible? Although the defendant tried to raise the defence of novus actus interveniens — the idea that the market vendors had, in throwing the squib around, committed an intervening act that broke the chain of causation between his original harmful act and the resulting injuries — he was unsuccessful. The actions of the store owners were somewhat foreseeable, because they threw the squib for their own safety; hence, the defence did not apply. The defendant was wholly liable.