During the month of May Paisley hosted a conference to celebrate the passing of what has been described as ‘the most famous (legal) case of all time’. In strict terms it is the Donoghue v Stevenson (1932 SC (HL) 31 case. In popular celebrated parlance it is the ‘Snail in the Bottle Case’. The conference was organised by the Renfrewshire Law centre, the University of the West of Scotland, and the Faculty of Advocates.
The story of the case as reported on the newly installed commemorative stone in Paisley sates:
On 26th August 1928, Mrs Donoghue met a friend at the Wellmeadow Cafe. Her friend brought her a bottle of ginger beer. As she enjoyed her drink, part of a decomposing snail fell out of the bottle. It is recorded that Mrs Donoghue suffered shock and a severe stomach upset as a result. As she had not bought the drink, Mrs Donoghue had no legal contract with the cafe owner. The case made on Mrs Donoghue's behalf therefore focused on whether the manufacturer and bottler of the drink, David Stevenson should be held responsible. Previously the law had declared there was no legal connection between consumer and manufacturer.
The case itself never came to trial and was finally settled out of court. Before that there was much legal debate over whether there was a case to hear. In May 1932 the House of Lords ruled there was. Lord Atkin looked to the Bible story of the Good Samaritan and the principal of loving your neighbour to help him decide. He found that just as neighbours should care for each other so should manufacturers care about the consumers of their products.
As we discussed this in the office our legal expert pointed an earlier 1990 conference (Pilgrimage to Paisley) on this case in which the Kerr Speirs, the then minister of Thomas Coates Memorial Baptist Church participated by preaching a sermon on Sunday 30th September entitled: Who is my Neighbour?
In this sermon Kerr cited the interesting phrase: it’s only the poor who have neighbours; the affluent have contacts.’
Reflecting further, however, on the judgement and on the parable he went on to argue that when we move from law to gospel the issue is not simply one of avoiding negligence and harm (about which the law has something to say and do) but is about showing ‘mercy’ and that such is ‘prompted neither by legal requirement nor moral duty, but by the dynamic spiritual motivation of caring love.’
The notion of a ‘sermon’ preached at a legal conference now belongs to another age but theologically reflecting on such issues and bearing witness albeit from a position of marginalisation on behalf of the marginalised remains part of the calling of the Christian community.
Sadly we had missed the adverts for the conference which was organised at least in part to promote ‘pro-bono’ legal work until it was too late or we might have pitched in with a paper.
For some further info go here: Paisley Law Centre
mmmm...can’t help but wonder if it might be an interesting thing instead of endless Christian conferences on mission, leadership, discipleship anod other worthy but often fundamentally ‘Church centred things,’ we had one on this theme of ‘who is our neighbour’ and then went out and showed mercy or (as Kerr emphasised in his sermon) went out and ‘did likewise’ as the Samaritan who Jesus held up as the paradigmatic example of the sort of love that is central to the gospel – well at least the gospel as Jesus embodied, described, and defined it.
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