TOWARDS A NEIGHBOURHOOD ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION REGIME: AN APPRAISAL OF NIGERIAN AND INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION LAWS

The neighbourhood’s test propounded by Lord Atkin in the locus classicus case of Donoghue Vs Stevenson! was intended for consumer protection. The facts of the case were that the appellant brought an action against the respondent because she had suffered injury as a result of drinking and seeing contaminated contents of ginger beer containing decomposed remains of a snail. The beer was manufactured by the respondents and bought from them by the owner of a café who was a retail seller from whom the appellant bought. In finding for the appellant the House of Lords in England per Lord Atkin held: In law there must be and is, some general conceptions of relations giving rise to a duty of care of which the particular cases found in the books are but instances... The liability for negligence whether you style it such or treat as in other systems as species of culpa is no doubt based on general public sentiments of moral wrong doing for which the offender must pay. But acts or omission which any moral code would censure can not in a practical world be treated so as to give a right to every person injured by them to demand relief. In this way rules of law arise which limit the range of complaints and the extent of their remedy. 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 those acts or omission called in question. The above holding of lord Atkin stipulates a legal duty of care toward one’s neighbour i.e. persons who are so closely and directly affected by one’s acts that one ought reasonably to have them in contemplation as being so affected when directing one’s mind to the acts or omissions called in question.