One evening in November 1958, two boys aged 8 and 10[5] were walking down Russell Road, Edinburgh where some Post Office workers were repairing cables under the street.

The question arose whether the Post Office workers had been negligent in leaving the site unattended with the lamps burning.

The defence had argued that the boys were not only trespassers but also contributorily negligent, but the court responded that the Post Office did not have any exclusive interest in the middle of the road to support a claim of trespass; and taking into consideration the youth of the boy, it was agreed that he was NOT contributorily negligent; and these points were dropped on appeal to the House of Lords).

It was therefore their duty that such passerby, "neighbour" in the language of Donoghue v. Stevenson, were, so far as reasonably practicable, protected from the various obstacles or allurements, which the workmen had brought to the site.

Lord Morris stated that "exercising an ordinary, and certainly not an over-exacting, degree of prevention the workmen should have decided, when the tea-break came, that someone had better be left in charge who could repel the intrusion of inquisitive children," thereby casting doubt that the workers had discharged their duty of care.

Lord Guest declared that the burden of proof that the presence of children was unforeseeable lay with the respondent; and on the facts there was insufficient evidence to do this.

Lord Reid concluded that the accident in question "was but a variant of foreseeable" and it mattered not it may have arisen in an unforeseeable manner.

Lord Morris argued that the injury suffered by the boy was of a higher degree, but was "of the kind or type of accident which was foreseeable".

Allowing the appeal, he found there was a duty owed by the respondent to safeguard the boy against the type or kind of occurrence which in fact happened and which resulted in his injuries, and the defenders are not absolved from liability because they didn't envisage "the precise concatenation of circumstances which lead up to the accident."

He was of the view that the lower courts wrongly gave more emphasis on the fact of the explosion; to Lord Guest, it was a non-essential element.