Taking stock of res IPSA loquitur: reflections on its applicability to the unsuspecting occupier of premises

• Author: Zanifa McDowell
• Position: Lecturer in Law, Faculty of Law, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus
• Pages: 87-100

TAKING STOCK OF RES IPSA

LOQUITUR:

REFLECTIONS ON ITS APPLICABILITY TO THE

UNSUSPECTING OCCUPIER OF PREMISES

ZANIFA

MCDOWELL*

INTRODUCTION

Suppose you are in control of premises on which a fire or explosion suddenly

occurs with resulting injury to a neighbour or passer-by; suppose an object

inexplicably falls from a window of your house and injures an unsuspecting

victim; suppose you are a baker and, somehow, a stone gets embedded in a

bun. While there is no process for reducing these types of

cases

to a formula

which will indicate for certain in which situation you will be held liable for

resulting injuries, nevertheless, there are specific legal guidelines which form

the basis of such an equation and which consequently call into operation what

we might refer to as an important yet overworked concept in the law of tort.

In English, "the thing tells it's own story."

The Latin phrase

res ipsa

loquitur occupies a position of nobility within the

area of English tort law

—

not only because it is expressed in Latin, but more

*

Lecturer in Law, Faculty of

Law,

University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus.

1 According to Mozley and Whiteley's Law

Dictionary

(1

lrh edn. by E.R. Hardy Ivamy) (1993),

the phrase means: "The matter itself speaks; or, 'the thing speaks for

itself.

A phrase used in

actions for damage occasioned by negligence where no proof

is

required of negligence beyond

the accident

itself."

2 While originating in England, it has nevertheless made its way into the Caribbean, Canada,

the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and other common law jurisdictions, although

some jurisdictions do not necessarily apply it in the same way. See, for example,

G.H.L.

Fridman, The Law of

Torts

in

Canada

318 (Vol. I) (1989) for comments on the differences in

the way in which it has been understood in England and Canada. Commonwealth Caribbean

jurisdictions have generally followed English precedents.

3 See Lord Shaw in

Ballard

v.

North

British

R.

Co. [1923] Sess. Cas., H.L., 43 - "If that phrase

had not been in Latin, nobody would have called it a principle."