Court case[1963] AC 837

Post Office workmen in Edinburgh were working in an open manhole in a street. When they left for a tea break they placed a canvas shelter over the manhole and surrounded it with lighted paraffin warning lamps, but left the site unattended. Two boys, one of them the plaintiff aged eight, entered the shelter carrying one of the lamps and a ladder. The lamp was knocked or dropped into the manhole; paraffin vapour escaped, was ignited and caused a violent explosion, and the plaintiff fell into the manhole and was severely burned. It was found that an explosion of this kind could not have been foreseen, although it was foreseeable that a child might be burned by a lamp if the site were left unattended.

The House of Lords held the Post Office (represented by the Lord Advocate) liable. The workmen were negligent in leaving an open manhole and lighted lamps, which were an allurement to children, unattended. The kind of injury that occurred - burns from the lamp - was of the very kind that was reasonably foreseeable; it did not matter that it was caused in an unforeseeable way, by an explosion rather than by direct contact with the flame or by spilt paraffin. The precise sequence of events and the manner in which the foreseeable kind of harm came about need not be foreseen, nor its exact extent.