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A v National Blood Authority [2001] 3 All ER 289

By Oxbridge Law TeamUpdated 04/01/2024 07:17

Judgement for the case A v National Blood Authority

KEY POINTS

  • According to Section 45(1) of the Consumer Protection Act 1987, blood intended for transfusion and organs meant for transplantation could be categorised as natural substances.

  • Thus, blood contaminated with hepatitis C could be deemed a defective product within the scope of this provision.

FACTS

  • This trial involved 114 claimants seeking damages due to their contraction of Hepatitis C from blood and blood products through transfusions.

  • The claimants were infected through blood transfusions during surgeries, accidents, childbirth, or treatment for blood disorders, with the earliest infection date being March 1, 1988, when the Consumer Protection Act 1987 came into effect.

  • The defendants' Look-Back program identified most of the claimants, who received infected blood due to the donors having Hepatitis C, rather than external contamination.

JUDGEMENT

  • The court ruled in favour of the claimants; the defendant was liable under the CPA 1987 as the blood was deemed defective.

COMMENTARY

  • This ruling was distinctive in that it established liability without needing to prove fault on the part of the National Blood Authority. This departure from the typical fault-based approach was noteworthy and had implications for cases involving medical products and services.

ORIGINAL ANALYSIS

  • Plaintiff was infected with hepatitis after a blood transfusion from a donor with the disease. At the time the risk of such infection through blood transfusions, though known to the medical profession, was impossible to avoid, either because the virus itself had not yet been discovered or because there was no way of testing for its presence in blood. 

  • Plaintiff brought a claim against Defendant under the Consumer Protection Act 1987 and Defendant argued that the “knowledge” defence applied. It was accepted by Defendant that liability for a defective product (in this case blood) was regardless of fault. 

  • The court held that the directive’s purpose was to make liability strict (to make claims easier) and therefore lack of “avoidability” of damage was not one of the circumstances to be taken into account and nor was the impracticality, cost or difficulty of precautionary measures, and the benefit to society or the utility of the product relevant.

    • The question was ascertaining legitimate expectations. Here the blood was defective because there were no warnings and it was legitimate to expect that the blood would be free from disease. 

  • The defence based on “knowledge” in s.4 did not apply where the existence of the generic defect was known or should have been known in the context of accessible information. Once the existence of the defect was known, there was the risk of that defect materialising in any particular product, and it was immaterial that the known risk was unavoidable in the particular product, since it would defy the point of the directive if a producer let dangerous products go to market simply because he didn’t know which of his products were dangerous. 

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Tort Law Notes
1,070 total pages
845 purchased

Tort Law notes fully updated for recent exams at Oxford and Cambridge. ...