Court case[1962] 2 QB 405

The plaintiff's husband was employed by the defendants as a labourer and galvaniser. His work involved lowering articles into a tank of molten metal by means of a crane, standing behind a protective sheet. Because of the defendants' negligence in not providing adequate protection, a piece of molten metal splashed out and burned his lip. The burn was treated, but it promoted cancer in tissues that were already in a pre-malignant condition; the cancer developed at the site of the burn, and about three years later he died of it. His widow sued the employers under the Fatal Accidents Acts for damages for his death.

Lord Parker CJ held the employers liable for the death. The burn was a foreseeable kind of injury from their negligence. The tortfeasor takes his victim as he finds him; if a man is negligently burned and, because of a condition peculiar to him, the burn leads to cancer and death, the wrongdoer is liable for the full consequences, although the death could not have been foreseen. The Wagon Mound, which concerned whether a kind of damage was foreseeable, did not abolish this principle: the question is only whether the initial type of injury (a burn) was foreseeable, not whether its extent or results were.