Legal Case Summary
Hughes v Lord Advocate [1963] AC 837
Remoteness of damage in tort law; that the kind of damage must be foreseeable, rather than the specific damage that actually occurred.
Facts
Workmen employed by the defendant had been working on a manhole cover, and then proceeded to take a break, leaving the hole encased in a tent with lights left nearby to make the area visible to oncoming vehicles. Two young boys, the claimants, encountered the uncovered and unattended man hole and proceeded to climb down to see inside of it, bringing with them one of the paraffin lamps left out by the workmen. The lamp was subsequently dropped and caused a significant explosion which left both of the boys with extensive injuries from the fire. The defendant submitted that such an action would have caused this outcome was deemed unforeseeable.
Issues
Whether a party can be found liable for injuries that could not have been specifically envisaged as resulting from their actions, even where the kind of injury was a foreseeable consequence.
Decision/Outcome
Here the House of Lords found for the claimants, and held that whilst it was indeed reasonably unforeseeable that a dropped lamp in the manhole would have resulted in an explosion of the size that occurred, this did not alter the fact that it was reasonably foreseeable that a person may have burnt themselves on the unattended paraffin lamps. The emphasis here was placed on the foreseeability of the kind of damage rather than the specific actual damage as this was considered too high a standard.
Updated 19 March 2026
This summary of Hughes v Lord Advocate [1963] AC 837 remains legally accurate. The case is a decision of the House of Lords and continues to represent good law on the remoteness of damage in negligence, establishing that it is the kind of harm that must be reasonably foreseeable, not the precise manner in which it occurs. This principle has been consistently affirmed in subsequent case law, including by the Privy Council in Wagon Mound (No 1) [1961] AC 388 (which predates Hughes and underpins the foreseeability test) and in later English and Scottish authorities. No statutory or judicial development has altered or displaced the principle as stated in this article. Readers should note that the article describes this as a tort law case, which is broadly correct in principle, though the action arose in Scotland and was decided under Scots law; the House of Lords treated the legal principles as consistent with English tort law on remoteness, and the case is routinely applied across both jurisdictions.
