“Dr Chinn’s theory [the claimant’s loss of control] was rejected as most unlikely to be right. The judge had found that the bicycle had been regularly maintained and there was no suggestion of misuse or damage; the judge was entitled to infer, as the handle bar had failed in normal use for a bike of this type, that it was defective within the meaning of the Act. This was not a process of reasoning that led the judge to conclude that the defect was the cause because it was the least improbable of the two; once the other cause had been eliminated, all the evidence pointed to the defect in the handle bar. The judge was entitled to conclude that the defect was on the evidence the probable cause of the loss of control of the bike and the fall.”
“Whereas liability without fault on the part of the producer is the sole means of adequately solving the problem, peculiar to our age of increasing technicality, of a fair apportionment of the risks inherent in modern technological production;… Whereas to protect the physical wellbeing and property of the consumer the defectiveness of the product should be determined by reference not to its fitness for use but to the lack of safety which the public at large is entitled to expect; Whereas the safety is assessed by excluding any misuse of the product not reasonable under the circumstances Whereas a fair apportionment of risk between the injured person and the producer implies that the producer should be able to free himself from liability if he furnishes proof as the existence of certain exonerating circumstances”