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[16] Clayards V. Dethick. COURT OF QUEEN'S BENCH. 1848 12 Q.B. 
439. 
Choice between evils. 
ON the trial, before Lord Denman, C.J., at the sittings in 
Middlesex after Easter term, 1847, it appeared that the 
plaintiff was a cab proprietor, having stables in Gower Mews, 
Gower Street. The mews communicated with the street by a passage 
13.5 feet wide and 56.5 feet long, and had no other outlet. In 
November 1845, the defendants, acting under directions from the 
Commissioner of Sewers, were deepening a sewer in Gower Street, 
and carrying a drain, in communication with it, up the passage 
leading into Gower Mews. For this purpose they made an open 
trench about 13 feet long and 6.5 feet wide; but not in the 
middle of the passage, the unbroken space on one side being 
about 4.5, and on the other side 2.5 feet wide. The opening was 
not fenced. Before the day on which the accident in question 
happened, the Commissioners had given notice to the occupiers of 
stables in the mews that the trench would continue open for a 
day or two longer, and they must put up with it; and had advised 
them to get other stables. On November 19th, the excavators had 
thrown the earth and gravel from the trench (unavoidably as was 
represented on behalf of the defendants) upon the wider space 
between the trench and the wall, to the height of four feet. 

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About five in the afternoon of that day, the plaintiff was 
bringing one of his horse out of the mews, and was about to put 
down planks for the purpose of getting him over the narrower 
space, which was least obstructed. The defendant Davis asked 
him what he was going to do, and said he would not be answerable 
for anything that happened by taking the horse over in that 
manner. The plaintiff asked how he was to do it; and said that 
he must get the horse out. The defendant said: "The plaintiff, 
with assistance, led the horse out, over the gravel. A little 
before six in the same evening, the plaintiff endeavoured to get 
another horse out in the same direction (neither defendant being 
then present); but the rubbish gave way. The horse fell into 
the trench, and was strangled in an endeavour to drag him out 
with ropes. 
Evidence was given, on the part of the defendants, that, on this 
second occasion, their men cautioned the plaintiff not to make 
the attempt, for that he would endanger, not only his horse, but 
the lives of men who were in the trench; but that the plaintiff 
said he did not care, and would go over. The statement was 
denied by the plaintiff. 
The Lord Chief Justice, in summing up, left it to the jury, in 
the first place, to say whether the defendants had been guilty 
of culpable negligence in not fencing the trench. His Lordship 
then observed that, if the defendants' witnesses were to be 
believed, and the plaintiff on the second occasion had, in 

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defiance of warning, incurred an evidently great danger, this 
was a rashness on his part which would excuse the defendants: 
but that it could not be the plaintiff's duty to refrain 
altogether from coming out of the mews merely because the 
defendants had made the passage in some degree dangerous: that 
the defendants were not entitled to keep the occupiers of the 
mews in a state of siege till the passage was declared safe, 
first creating a nuisance and then excusing themselves by giving 
notice that there was some danger: though, if the plaintiff had 
persisted in running upon a great and obvious danger, his action 
could not be maintained. And he left it to the jury to say 
whether or not the plaintiff had so acted. Verdict for 
plaintiff: damages £20.