Donoghue V Stevenson - Existence of The Snail

Existence of The Snail

In a speech scheduled to be delivered in May 1942 (although delayed due to the Second World War), Lord Justice MacKinnon jokingly suggested that it had been proved that Donoghue did not find a snail in the bottle.

To be quite candid, I detest that snail ... I think that did not reveal to you that when the law had been settled by the House of Lords, the case went back to Edinburgh to be tried on the facts. And at that trial it was found that there never was a snail in the bottle at all. That intruding gastropod was as much a legal fiction as the Casual Ejector.

This allegation, suggests Chapman, established itself as a legal myth; it was repeated by Lord Justice Jenkins in a 1954 Court of Appeal practice note. However, both MacKinnon and Jenkins were unaware that the trial had not gone ahead due to Stevenson's death – the events following the case were only published in response to the practice note. As Donoghue's factual claims were therefore never tested in court, it is generally held that what happened in the Wellmeadow Café is not proven and will not be known for certain.