Portal:Law/Selected quotations/1

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The rule that you are to love your neighbour becomes in law you must not injure your neighbour; and the lawyer's question "Who is my neighbour?" receives a restricted reply. You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour. Who then in law is my neighbour? The answer seems to be persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought reasonably to have them in contemplation as being so affected when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions which are called in question.

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— Lord Atkin, in Donoghue v Stevenson (1931), giving what would become a classic definition of the extent of the law of negligence.

Source edit

Law report at the British and Irish Legal Information Institute website