The Calcutta Law Journal Short Notes of Cases Articles and other Matters May 16 1908

In defining the test by which this new social duty is to be ascertained this enlarged measure of responsibility applied the tendency of modern judicial opinion is overwhelmingly toward a full recognition of the popular conception of what is natural or probable as the standard to be adopted. [...] It is the actual forsight of the average man in view of the circumstances which he knows or should know of the real probability of injury to others picturing the future course of events the real conditions which will probably be created the effect of the known habits of human beings and of the ordinary operation of usual natural forces under such conditions as affecting the injurious tend [...] if the wrongfulness of the act be admitted it is the actual course of nature depending on the orderly operation of known natural forces.including again the customary habits of mankind under given circumstances by which proximity of the harm to such wrong is ascertained. [...] The proximity between the act done and the harm sustained is however only one step to the determination of the final question of legal liability. [...] There was prevalent in the early part of the nineteenth century just at the time when the earliest cases of contrbutory negligence were decided a principle of limitation of liability purely legal the creature of judicial rather than popular conception of justice stopping recovery short of either the probable or natural result of the act complained of.