Pitman v Eaton

This matter concerned an application for special leave to appeal to the High Court of Australia. The applicant, Mr Steven Charles Pitman, sought to appeal a decision of the Full Court which had overturned a finding by the trial judge. The dispute arose from an accident where the respondent, a nurse, rendered assistance to an injured person. In the course of providing aid, the respondent suffered a back injury due to a pre-existing vulnerability in her spine, which was unknown to her or anyone else.

The central legal issue before the High Court was the principle of remoteness of damage. Specifically, the court was required to determine whether the respondent's injury was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the applicant's actions, or if the chain of causation was broken by the unforeseeable nature of the respondent's specific vulnerability. The applicant argued that the trial judge correctly found the injury to be unforeseeable, while the Full Court had erred in its application of legal principles.

The applicant contended that the Full Court had misapplied the principles established in cases such as *Wyong Shire Council v Shirt* and *Chapman v Hearse*. The applicant submitted that the Full Court had taken a passage from *Chapman v Hearse* out of context, applying it to the issue of remoteness of damage when it was originally intended to address the existence of a duty of care. The applicant argued that the trial judge's reasoning, which focused on the unforeseeability of the specific sequence of events leading to the injury, was the correct approach. The Full Court, conversely, had held that it was sufficient if it was reasonably foreseeable that someone might come to the assistance of the injured person and suffer bodily injury in consequence, without needing to foresee the precise nature of the injury or the manner in which it was sustained.