Bolton v. Stone Case Brief Summary | Law Case Explained

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Bolton v. Stone | [1951] A.C. 850

Baseball’s popular throughout North America, and it’s played on other continents. But outside the United States, cricket is even more popular than baseball, especially in the United Kingdom and among former British colonies. A cricket ball is a little smaller, harder, and heavier than a baseball. So, like a baseball, if one is hit hard and fast, it can injure someone not directly involved in the game. That was the sticky wicket faced by Great Britain’s House of Lords in Bolton versus Stone.

Bessie Stone was standing on the highway outside her house when she was struck and injured by a cricket ball batted by a player on the cricket ground across the road. Stone sued Bolton, a team official, and the cricket club that owned the ground, or field, from which the ball was batted.

Testimony established that the distance from the batsman to where the ball hit Stone was just under one hundred yards. The ball also had to clear a seventeen-foot-high fence. Stone’s neighbor, whose home was closer to the field than Stone’s home was, testified that cricket balls from the field had hit his house five or six times over the previous few years. Club members with over thirty years’ experience testified that it was rare for a hit cricket ball to clear the fence. The members testified that the hit that struck Ms. Stone was exceptional.

The trial court judge ruled that Bolton wasn’t negligent. On appeal, the Court of Appeal ruled that any history of batted balls escaping outside the fence made it reasonably foreseeable that a batted ball could fly outside the fence. Therefore, Bolton could be negligent for failing to prevent another ball from clearing the fence. Bolton then appealed to the House of Lords.

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