Court case(1809) 11 East 60

The defendant, for the purpose of making some repairs to his house, put a pole across part of the public road near it, leaving a free passage on one side. The plaintiff left a public house at dusk, about eight o'clock on an August evening, when candles were being lit but there was still light enough to see the obstruction at a distance of about a hundred yards. He was riding very violently along the road, did not see the pole, rode against it and was thrown from his horse and badly injured. A witness said that if he had not been riding so hard he might have seen and avoided it.

The jury, directed that if a person riding with reasonable and ordinary care could have seen and avoided the obstruction and the plaintiff was riding extremely hard without ordinary care, they should find for the defendant, did so. The Court of King's Bench refused a new trial. Lord Ellenborough C.J. said: "A party is not to cast himself upon an obstruction which has been made by the fault of another, and avail himself of it, if he do not himself use common and ordinary caution to be in the right... One person being in fault will not dispense with another's using ordinary care for himself. Two things must concur to support this action: an obstruction in the road by the fault of the defendant, and no want of ordinary care to avoid it on the part of the plaintiff."