---

Compensation Bill [HL]

I will break briefly my vow of silence to say that I am afraid that 100 per cent contributory negligence is a logical impossibility. You may of course be entirely responsible for your own injury, as was the case with young Mr Tomlinson in Tomlinson v Congleton Borough Council because in that case the court found that the Congleton Borough Council had done everything that it should have done in the circumstances. The whole idea of contributory negligence is it is contributory because both parties have contributed to it. The suggestion that, for example, somebody who is thrown out of a car because he is not wearing a seatbelt could be held under any fair system to be held entirely responsible for his own injury when the crash was caused by another driver driving extremely carelessly really does not make sense. We are going back by this to the doctrine of, I think it is called, the last causative act, which was abolished in the 1930s.