Bolton v. Stone (

1951) A.C. 850

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

During a cricket match a batsman hit a ball which struck and injured Stone (P) who was standing on a highway adjoining the ground. The ball was hit out of the ground at a point at which there was a protective fence rising to seventeen feet above the cricket pitch. The distance from the striker to the fence was some seventy-eight yards and that to the place where the respondent was hit about one hundred yards. The ground had been occupied and used as a cricket ground for about ninety years, and there was evidence that on some six occasions in a period of over thirty years a ball had been hit into the highway, but no one had been injured. P claimed damages for negligence from the appellants, as occupiers of the ground. P claimed that a fence was not high enough to keep the balls from flying out of the field. D claimed that only 6-10 balls had flown out in the last 30 years, so it was an unforeseeable risk. The trial court ruled for D; P appealed. Appeals court reversed in favor of P stating that it was a foreseeable risk. This was the appeal to the House of Lords.