Lavatories and Free Will: Causation Conundrums in the High Court

The decision in Rickards v Lothian is known today, if at all, for what is says about the natural user defence in the now defunct (in Australia) tort based on the case of Rylands v Fletcher. In fact, this point was only of peripheral importance when the case was heard in the High Court of Australia. Instead, the High Court decision was an early discussion of a point that would assume a much greater importance later in the 20th century: the extent to which liability in negligence could arise even though the damage was the immediate result of the intervening act of a third party. Although the majority reasoning was ultimately not accepted by the Privy Council when the decision was appealed, it reminds us that there was more than one early view of how intervening acts should be treated in the law of negligence.