Winterbottom v Wright (1842) 10 M & W 109
The availability of a claim where the claimant is not a party to the contract with the defendant.
Facts
The defendant contracted with the postmaster general to supply a mail coach for the purpose of carrying the mail along a particular route. A third party also contracted with the postmaster general to provide horses and a mail coachman to operate the mail coach. The claimant was the mail coachman contracted by the third party. The claimant was injured as a result of several latent defects in the coach and attempted to bring an action against the defendant with whom he had no contractual agreement.
Issues
Whether the defendant owed a duty to any third party who might be injured as a result of the negligent provision of the coach or indeed any other negligent actions in regard to the contract.
Held
The claimant’s claim failed. It was held that although the defendant contracted to maintain the mail coach in a safe condition and undoubtedly failed to do so, the duty was owed under the defendant’s contract with the postmaster general. The defendant owed no duty to the claimant because the duty could not extend beyond the contractual one. It was considered that to allow the claimant’s claim to succeed would cause a duty to be held in all circumstances where harm occurred. There would be no limit to the number of claims that might arise. It was recognised that leaving the claimant without remedy was harsh, but that this should not influence the court’s decision.
Updated 20 March 2026
This article accurately describes the facts, issues, and decision in Winterbottom v Wright (1842) 10 M & W 109. The case remains a recognised authority in legal history for the proposition that, at common law, a duty of care in tort could not extend beyond the parties to a contract.
Students should be aware, however, that the strict privity-based approach to tortious duty of care established by this case was substantially eroded over the following century. Most significantly, Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562 fundamentally altered the law by establishing that a manufacturer could owe a duty of care in negligence to an end user with whom they had no contractual relationship. The neighbour principle articulated in that case, and later developed through Caparo Industries plc v Dickman [1990] 2 AC 605, means that the outcome in Winterbottom v Wright would almost certainly be different under modern negligence law. The article would benefit from making clear that Winterbottom v Wright is now of primarily historical and jurisprudential significance rather than representing the current legal position.
