REMOTENESS OF DAMAGE

After the commission of a tort, the defendant is liable only for those consequences which are
not too remote from his conduct. He cant be made liable ad infinitum for all the
consequences which follow his wrongful act. The question to be asked is whether the damage
is too remote a consequence of the wrongful act or not. If that is too remote, the defendant is
not liable. If, on the other hand, the act and consequence are so connected that they are not
too remote but are proximate, the defendant will be responsible for the consequences.

There are two main tests to determine whether the damage is remote or proximate:

1. Test of Directness- A person is liable for all the direct consequences of his wrongful
act, whether he could have foreseen them or not because consequences which directly
follow the wrongful act are not too remote. The only thing to be seen is whether the
defendants act is wrongful or not.
In Re Polemis case, the direct but not reasonably foreseeable result of the failure of
the defendant's servants to stop the falling of boards into the hold of a ship was a fire
which caused the total destruction of the ship. The Court of Appeal was required to
determine whether the damage fell within the purview of a claim for damages brought
on behalf of the ship owners. It was held that "given the breach of duty which
constitutes the negligence and given the damage as a direct result of that negligence,
the anticipations of the person whose negligent act has produced the damage (are) . . .
irrelevant" What is required is that the harm be the direct result of the conduct
regardless of how remote. The owners of the ship were thus held entitled to recover
the loss being the direct consequence of the wrongful act although such a loss could
not have been reasonably foreseen.

2. Test of Reasonable Foresight- According to this test, if the consequences of a

wrongful act could have been foreseen by a reasonable man placed in the
circumstances of the wrongdoer, they are not too remote.
The Wagon Mound case held this test to better than the test of directness. The Privy
Council soundly disapproved the rule established in Re Polemis, as being "out of the
current of contemporary thought" and held that to find a party liable for negligence
the damage must be reasonably foreseeable. The council found that even though the
crew were careless and breached their duty of care, the resulting extensive damage by
fire was not foreseeable by a reasonable person, although the minor damage of oil on
metal on the slipway would have been foreseeable.