Gorris v Smith

Gorris v Smith

Gorris v Smith, April 23, 1874

Statute law can only be applied to do what Parliament passed it to do. In this case, a ship owner agreed to take the claimant’s sheep from Hamburg to Newcastle, but some of them were washed overboard. The owner of the sheep sued. He argued that no pens had been provided on the ship, in breach of a statutory duty under the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act 1869, which required pens to be installed on the decks of ships used to transfer animals. If there had been pens on the decks, the sheep would have survived. However, the court ruled that the claimant could not claim damages on such grounds because the object of the statute was to protect animals from contagious disease, not from falling into the sea. The case is often cited by anyone seeking to show that once a law has been made for a particular purpose, it would be wrong to apply it for another. [1]

Resources

Notes

  1. Zulkifli Hasan, The cases that changed Britain: 1870-1916

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