Snail in ginger beer 'paved the way for injury compensation claims'

20/11/2009

The injury compensation claims of more than a million people have been helped along by a case in 1932 involving a snail and a bottle of ginger beer, it has been revealed.

In a BBC Radio 4 programme, journalist Clive Coleman told how shop assistant May Donoghue was drinking a ginger beer float at the Wellmeadow Cafe in Paisley when the remains of a snail dropped out of the opaque bottle.

She later complained of stomach pains and was diagnosed with gastroenteritis and shock.

A solicitor named Walter Leechman took up her case, issuing a writ against the manufacturer of the ginger beer which went all the way to the House of Lords three years later.

Lord Atkin of Aberdovey found in favour of Ms Donoghue, paving the way for hundreds of thousands of injury cases in the future that related to product liability.

In other product liability compensation news, the Daily Mail reports that the father of a toddler who allegedly lost part of a finger to a dangerous hinge on a pushchair is seeking injury compensation.

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