Tort Law

Letang v. Cooper

[1965] 1 QB 232

Citation: [1965] 1 QB 232
Court: Court of Appeal (England and Wales)
Date: 15 Jun 1964
Bench: Lord Denning MR; Danckwerts and Diplock LJJ

Facts

• Mrs Doreen Letang was staying at a hotel in Cornwall in July 1957.
• She lay down to sunbathe on a grassy area that was also ordinarily used for parking cars.
• Mr Cooper entered the parking area while driving his Jaguar motor car.
• Cooper did not see Mrs Letang and drove the vehicle over her legs, causing personal injuries.
• The injury was not intentionally inflicted. The factual basis of the claim was that Cooper had driven without reasonable care.
• Mrs Letang did not commence proceedings until February 1961, more than three years after the accident.
• At that time, a personal-injury action based on negligence was barred after three years, while an action described as trespass to the person appeared to carry a six-year limitation period.
• Mrs Letang pleaded both negligence and trespass. She admitted that negligence was time-barred but argued that the direct physical interference allowed her to recover through trespass.
• The trial judge accepted that argument and awarded her £575. Cooper appealed. (vLex)

Issue

• Whether an unintentional but direct physical injury can constitute trespass to the person.
• Whether Mrs Letang could avoid the limitation period governing negligence by describing the accident as trespass.
• Whether modern tort law should classify personal injury according to the directness of the harm or according to whether it was intentional or negligent.

Rule

• Trespass to the person, including battery, concerns intentional physical interference.
• Where personal injury is caused unintentionally, the proper cause of action is negligence.
• A negligence claim requires proof that:
o the defendant owed a duty of care;
o the defendant failed to exercise reasonable care;
o the breach caused the claimant’s injury; and
o legally recoverable damage resulted.
• A direct injury is not automatically trespass merely because force passed immediately from the defendant to the claimant.
• Pure accident without intention or negligence does not create liability merely because bodily contact occurred.

Application

• Cooper had not deliberately driven over Mrs Letang’s legs. There was therefore no intention to make physical contact with her.
• Her injury could be explained only as the consequence of careless driving.
• Historically, common law distinguished between:
o direct injuries, for which trespass was used; and
o indirect or consequential injuries, for which an action on the case was used.
• The Court of Appeal considered that division obsolete. Modern law should not make liability depend merely upon whether the force operated directly or indirectly.
• The legally meaningful distinction was between intentional and unintentional injury.
• If Cooper had deliberately driven at Mrs Letang or intentionally applied force to her body, trespass to the person would have been appropriate.
• Because the contact was unintentional, her only substantive claim was negligence, which required proof of a failure to take reasonable care.
• Allowing her to reclassify the same careless accident as trespass would produce arbitrary results. Two people injured through identical careless driving could face different limitation periods depending only upon how their lawyers described the claim.
• It would also revive technical distinctions between old forms of action that no longer represented the substance of modern tort liability.
• Since the only cause of action was negligence, Mrs Letang could not obtain the longer limitation period merely by using the label “trespass.” Her claim had been brought outside the three-year period. (vLex)

Conclusion

• The Court of Appeal allowed Cooper’s appeal.
• It held that unintentional personal injury is not actionable as trespass to the person.
• Where the injury is unintentionally caused, the claimant must proceed in negligence and prove want of reasonable care.
• Mrs Letang’s only valid cause of action was negligence. Since that claim was filed more than three years after the accident, it was statute-barred.
• The trial court’s award of £575 was set aside and judgment was entered for Cooper.