Cases - Bolam v Friern Hospital Management Committee

Record details

Name

Bolam v Friern Hospital Management Committee

Date

[1957]

Citation

1 WLR 582

Keywords

Contract administration

Summary

Although this case concerned medical negligence, it is widely accepted that it sets out the test by which professional negligence in all fields is judged. Giving judgment, McNair defined 'negligence' as follows:

'In an ordinary case it is generally said that you judge that [i.e. negligence] by the action of the man in the street. He is an ordinary man. In one case it has been said that you judge it by the conduct of the man on the top of a Clapham omnibus. He is an ordinary man. But where you get a situation which involves the use of some special skill or competence, then the test whether there has been negligence or not is not the test of the man on the top of a Clapham omnibus, because he has not go this special skill. The test is the standard of the ordinary skilled man exercising and professing to have that special skill. A man may not possess the highest expert skill at the risk of being found negligent. It is well established law that it is sufficient if he exercises the ordinary skill of an ordinary competent man exercising that particular art ... A doctor is not negligent if he is acting in accordance with a practice accepted as proper by a responsible body of medical men skilled in that particular art.'

A similar test applies to the standard of care expected of a contract administrator.