Defective Products in UK Law

It seems to me that words far more specific than these would be necessary in order to show that a section which provides that "an action … shall not be brought" means that the cause of action is extinguished. They mean the same as if subsection (2) had said "this section prevents an action being brought …".

In my view that is not the natural meaning of the words used in the section. In common with sections 2 (tort), 5 (simple contract), 7 (awards) and 8 (specialties), to mention but a few, as well as section 14A, the operative words of subsection (1) are

It is said that the words "bars the right of action" indicate an intention to bar the legal rights in question rather than merely the right to bring proceedings, especially in the light of the fact that the section is to have effect even though the cause of action has not yet accrued. In my view however, this places more weight on the language of the subsection than it will bear.

The configuration of the asbestos factory dated back to the time when Cape introduced its Pluto board manufacturing business into the Cowley Works. By installing its business there, it must have implicitly undertaken a duty of care to ensure that its business was carried on without risk to the employees in the other business of Cape Products carried on at the Cowley Works. He was also (if this label makes any difference) the group medical adviser of Cape.

In summary, this case demonstrates that in appropriate circumstances the law may impose on a parent company responsibility for the health and safety of its subsidiary's employees.

Drawing from the initial Skeleton Argument of Mr Sheehan and Mr Andrew Kinnier for the Defendant in order to determine the response to the claim, the essential factual allegation to which I have referred is denied and it is said, in any event, that the issue of whether a prescription-only drug is "defective" cannot be determined simply by "comparing the incidence and/or severity of a particular adverse reaction against the incidence and/or severity of the same adverse reaction after treatment with another [drug]".

The first consideration is that, in Donoghue v. Stevenson itself and in all the numerous cases in which the principle of that decision has been applied to different but analogous factual situations, it has always been either stated expressly, or taken for granted, that an essential ingredient in the cause of action relied on was the existence of danger, or the threat of danger, of physical damage to persons or their property, excluding for this purpose the very piece of property from the defective condition of which such danger, or threat of danger, arises.