Facts
- RESCUE CASES
- The defendants’ servant left a two−horse van unattended in a street. A boy threw a stone on the horses and they bolted, causing grave danger to women and children on the road.
- A police constable, who was on duty inside a nearby police station, on seeing the same, managed to stop the horses, but in doing so, he himself suffered serious personal injuries.
Principles
- Novus actus interveniens – Breaking the chain – not taken into consideration
- Volenti non fit injuria
- Greer, L.J. adopting the American rule said that “the doctrine of the assumption of risk does not apply where the plaintiff has, under an exigency caused by the defendant’s wrongful misconduct, consciously and deliberately faced a risk, even of death, to rescue another from imminent danger of personal injury or death, whether the person endangered is one to whom he owes a duty of protection, as a member of his family, or is a mere stranger to whom he owes no such special duty
- it would be absurd to say that if a man deliberately incurs a risk he is entitled to less protection than if he acts on sudden impulse without thinking whether he should do so or not.
- Mistake of fact or mistake of law
