Case report on Bolton v Stone.pdf

Case report on Bolton v Stone Submitted by Zhang Yixi, Arthur The case to be discussed was an appeal in the House of Lords on 10th May, 1951 from a judgment of Court of Appeal reversing a decision of Oliver J. (Reference [1951] AC 850). The appellant was Bolton and others, who represented the Committee and Members of the Cheetham Cricket Group and were acquitted of negligence and nuisance in the court of first instance but found guilty in the court of appeal, while the respondent was Ms. Stone. The appeal was allowed and the Committee and Members of the Cheetham Cricket Group was acquitted. The accident happened on 9th August, 1947, when Miss Stone, the Plaintiff, was injured by a cricket ball while standing on the highway outside her house, 10, Beckenham Road, Cheetham Hill. The ball was hit by a batsman playing in a match on the Cheetham Cricket Ground which is adjacent to the highway. Stone sued Bolton and others, the owner of the cricket field for public nuisance and common law negligence claiming that the field did not have a fence high enough to prevent balls from flying out of the field. Due to an arrangement in 1910 between the builder of Beckenham Road and the Club, Beckenham Road had for some years been a few yards nearer the batsman than the opposite end. The cricket field, at the point at which the ball left it, is protected by a fence 7 feet high but the upward slope of the ground is such that the top of the fence is some 17 feet above the cricket pitch. The distance from the striker to the fence is about 78 yards and to the place where the plaintiff was hit, just under 100 yards. Of over 30 years’ standing, the hit was exceptional and it was only very rarely indeed that a ball was hit over the fence during a match: only 6 were proved in 38 years.1 In essence, Miss Stone was exceptionally injured by a cricket ball which were rarely hit over the fence for the past few decades and accuse the cricket field owner of public nuisan